February Breath
by run4life
Summary: Sophie Hatter's life in 2010 is relatively normal except for a few shocking twists that still haunt her from the past. But recently it's a handsome wizard named Howl claiming she's a witch who's lived several past lives with him. AU. LAST CHAPTER UP!
1. Chapter 1

**February Breath**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Howl's Moving Castle, trust me, you'd know it.**

**A/N: So I was thinking one day. (Miraculous, I know.) And I had an idea for a Howl's Moving Castle fanfic with a Sophie that's a little more independent and a little different, from modern times. I got inspiration from a certain song mentioned below, my ideas evolved, and this is the result! Basic ideas are movie-based, but a lot of my own twist thrown in. Completely original plot—yes, something I **_**do **_**own! Enjoy and comment please :)**

_You take the breath right out of me  
__And left a hole where my heart should be  
__You gotta fight just to make it through  
__Cause I will be the death of you_

Breath – Breaking Benjamin

**Chapter 1: A Spirited Girl and a Handsome Stranger**

A girl stood outside the high school, putting away her cell phone and sighing. Her long brown hair whipped around her face in the February wind that was laced with a few snowflakes although the sky was impossibly clear, and she began to stomp through the snowy field towards the woods. The day bore an uncanny resemblance to multiple occurrences in the past: several that Sophie did not remember, and one that she tried not to remember. But she didn't think of this. The world looked perfectly normal to her. However, that was soon to change.

**Sophie**

Great. My mom had left me a message on my cell phone saying that she couldn't pick me up after extra help and she was so sorry, but I'd have to walk home since Dad was away on business again. Oh well. It wasn't far to my house, and besides, it wasn't all that cold. I only had to walk through what all the kids called the "sketchy woods" to get off campus without being run over, and then past Main Street, then down a couple short roads with sidewalks and I'd be at my street. All the roads around school were incredibly busy and besides, the trees were iced over and snowy which made a pretty picture. It was too bad it sometimes smelled like crack in the woods—that was where they got their name among the student body. Odds are, you'd find a group or two of a few druggies there, especially after school. They weren't dangerous or anything, though, if you walked by. They'd just look at you like the stoned idiots they were and then go back to talking about the latest way to smuggle cocaine, or whatever.

I made it to the edge of the woods and cautiously sniffed the air. No drugs as far as I could tell. It wasn't like everyone in town was on something; it was just that, you know, every high school will have its classic druggies. We ran back here for track when we weren't allowed to leave campus during practice, and a couple of the guys from the team had been bugged by the druggies, which resulted in a lack of druggies in the woods for a few weeks. My friend Maria and I had been the ones to save the poor guys. We were jogging and came across the two of them getting pushed around so we marched in with all guns blazing and got their "attackers" in some deep shit with both the school authorities and the cops later, for the illegal and underage drug use. Ha ha for them. They had practically ripped them new—never mind.

* * *

She tensed. Up ahead was the same bunch of guys. "Speak of the devil…" she muttered and walked on at a moderate pace.

As she approached, one of the idiots must have had some kind of mind left because he elbowed his friend and said, "Hey. Isn't that one of those chicks that got us busted before?"

"Huh?" Dumb blinked oh-so-intelligently.

"You mean that time with those son-of-a-bitch runners?" Dumber asked.

"Yeah, yeah, that's it!"

"Oh right, from that dumbass team!"

"This one? Really?"

"Yeah dude, remember? Her and that blonde."

Her head had snapped up and she had clenched her teeth when they cussed about her team. No one appreciated the strength it took to be a runner—she wasn't even very good at it and she knew that much. She wasn't all that athletic; she'd always been a dancer (and she was mediocre at even that.) But _no one_ insulted good people that she was even so much as acquainted with.

"Whaddaya gonna do about it now, huh?"

They were moving towards her. Crap. Circling around her. There were six of them.

"Gonna go tell on us now?"

"Yeah, go running off to someone. Get us suspended again, see what happens to your little manbitch friends this time." One of them behind her pushed at her very slightly as the guy to her

left, who seemed like the head honcho, said that.

"Don't touch me," she snapped, pivoting to face him.

"Ooooh…" they all leered obnoxiously.

"I like them feisty," sneered the leader, taking her shoulder from behind.

"I said _don't touch me_!" she snarled as she spun around again, grabbing his arm and twisting hard. He yelped and tried to jerk away but nearly dislocated his arm in doing so. His little minions apparently didn't get the message because two of them tried to shove her to the ground. She had to let go of the leader and kicked all three of them down below but another guy, one of the taller, stronger ones, got a hold of her arm. She tried to break his hold but he was too strong and the two guys that she hadn't gotten at advanced on her menacingly. She hissed at them, trying to think of how to get out of this, when a second later, the one holding her simply wasn't there anymore. Instinct kicked in and she was about to go flying at the two in front of her but something yanked her back abruptly.

There was a new hand on her wrist and as she turned to hit whoever belonged to the hand she froze completely involuntarily. This guy couldn't be one of them.

He was tall and thin but still muscular, with blonde hair that fell into his blue-green eyes. The eyes struck me the most. No human teenager would have eyes that color; it was incredibly unnatural and exotic-looking. He was a teenager, right? He looked like he could easily be a college student. All this, not to mention that he was without a doubt the most handsome person she'd ever seen, and she was sure, she ever would see.

He fixed her with that turquoise-colored stare, looking at her with something she couldn't quite identify. Then he smiled mischievously and looked past her. She heard several thuds and turned in confusion to see six druggies sound asleep on the ground.

"Do you usually keep this kind of company?" he asked in a low, lazy, but slightly lilting voice.

She huffed, trying to clear her head. This handsome stranger was messing with her thought processes. "Absolutely not." He dropped her wrist and she continued. "What walking disasters. Or rather, um, sleeping…"

He smiled again. "They won't wake up for a couple of hours. And they will have thought it was all a hallucination from the drugs."

She gave him a suspicious look. "Look, I don't even know you, but…thanks. And I really need to get going." She picked up her bag where she had dropped it and made to walk away but the boy stopped her.

"Sophie. Wait." And she froze. How in the hell did he know who she was?

"I'm sorry, I'm Sophie Hatter. Do you go here? I'm so sorry if I don't remember you somehow…" because she would most definitely remember someone like him.

"No, I don't go here, don't worry. But I know who you are anyway."

"Oh…kay. How do you know me exactly?" This guy was starting to scare her a little. He noticed this.

"Where are my manners? My name is Howl Pendragon," he inclined his head. Howl. What an odd name. But a little mysterious. It fit him, somehow. "As to how I know you, I've been looking for you and watching you for a couple days. I'm sorry, but it's all I can say. Can you trust me with just that much?" he looked a little lonely now but it was still kind of scary—like, he'd "been looking for and watching" her? What the hell? "This sounds kind of bad, but will you come with me?"

She blinked. "Um…where exactly?" What was this guy—Howl—talking about?

"It'll be a lot easier to explain once we're there, trust me."

And she wanted to trust him. And he _had_ saved her… "But why? I'm sorry, but two minutes ago I didn't know of your existence! Why should I trust you when you show up out of nowhere?"

Howl sighed. "All right, well, in short, I've been looking for someone for a—a long time and you're definitely the right person, and you just have to trust me. Not to mention you're lucky I was the one to find you first," he added under his breath but I still heard him. "Please?" he shifted uncomfortably.

Sophie made a sudden, snap decision. He sounded just plain batshit crazy but she just had this…feeling. Like she was being drawn to him, and not just cause he was incredibly handsome.

She would go with this gorgeous wacko that she didn't know.

**A/N: So did you like it so far? Kinda short. A tiny bit boring, well, except for Sophie whupping some ass, but it gets better later on, I promise. Comment and all that good stuff, please! :)**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: If I owned Howl's Moving Castle, trust me, you'd know it.**

**A/N: So I was thinking one day. (Miraculous, I know.) And I had an idea for a Howl's Moving Castle fanfic with a Sophie that's a little more independent and a little different, from modern times. I got inspiration from a certain song mentioned below, my ideas evolved, and this is the result! Basic ideas are movie-based, but a lot of my own twist thrown in. Completely original plot—yes, something I **_**do **_**own! Enjoy and comment please **

You take the breath right out of me

_And left a hole where my heart should be_

_You gotta fight just to make it through_

_Cause I will be the death of you_

Breath – Breaking Benjamin

**Chapter 2: Another World**

**To recap from the last chapter:**

Sophie made a sudden, snap decision. He sounded just plain batshit crazy but she just had this…feeling. Like she was being drawn to him, and not just cause he was incredibly handsome.

She would go with this gorgeous wacko that she didn't know.

**And onto the current chapter (it gets better in the middle-- I promise. Lotsa explaining and stuff, a little long-winded…)**

Then she thought of something important. "Give me two minutes." He nodded and Sophie pulled out her phone and dialed Maria's house. She never picked up her cell phone.

"Hello, Cooper residence!" said her best friend's voice brightly on the other end.

"Hey Ria, it's me. I have a ridiculously huge favor to ask you and I don't want to have to ask you but I know you're the only one who can…" she trailed off.

"Sure Soph, fire away." She sounded worried.

"So it's a long story and I don't even understand it myself, but I need you to call my mom and tell her two things."

"Alright."

"First, that I'm sorry I didn't call back and I'm fine. And second that I'm staying at your house for the weekend."

"…Sophie? What's wrong? Of course I'll cover for you, but what's happening? You aren't running away, are you?!"

"No, no, nothing like tha—" she paused. Here she was, being handed the perfect answer.

"Well—yeah. I guess you can call it that. But I don't want her calling the cops or anything! So can you let your mom in on it and cover for me for the weekend? I know it's so much to ask, but I promise I'll explain everything once I'm back." I gave Howl a significant look. Because _he _was going to explain to _me_. Pronto. He smiled back angelically, guessing my thoughts, making him look like, well, like an angel come to earth. "You and your mom both know me so well, you were the only person I could trust to do this, but I'm sorry." Maria's mom was pretty cool. She completely understood teenagers and would do anything for her daughter and her best friend in a heartbeat.

"Soph, it's fine. We can handle it. But what if she comes over to bring your stuff? I mean, you're "staying for the weekend.""

"Um. Actually, you know what? I'll call her myself. She's still at work so I can say you walked home with me and we went in the back door and I got all my stuff, then your mom came and picked us up."

"Okay. And, Sophie?"

"Yeah?"

"…Be careful. You're still my best friend, you know. If anything happens I might just have to kill someone—"

"—and legal cases are so boring!" we chorused, finishing our famous line together.

Sophie sobered. "I will be. You don't know how much I owe you, Ria. Really."

"Don't mention it. Best friends, right?"

"Right."

"Okay. Bye."

"I'll see you later."

* * *

I hung up, sighed, and speeddialed my mom's office. I made a calm and clear explanation to her, assuring her that I had all that I needed and that there was a good chance we'd spend all of Saturday at the mall and yes I had plenty of money with me. I would be home Sunday night.

At this point I looked at Howl significantly, and saw that he looked uncomfortable again. I dismissed the thought and said goodbye to my mom.

"You don't know if there's any chance I'll be able to get back by then," I said bluntly.

"Well…yes. You're right. So let's go now—we don't want your mother thinking you've been kidnapped or something."

"And you call this what?" I muttered as I followed him down a side path to two birch trees that crossed each other, making a doorway-like arch. "Oh, you're kidding. This is way too cliché."

He smiled. "Well, stories have to come from some kind of fact, don't they?" He held out a hand and I took it nervously, stepping under the trees right after him.

I gasped. It really was like in the movies. We were suddenly in a sinister-looking, fog-covered field. Actually, more like a landscape of continuing hills. And the woods were nowhere to be seen.

"The Wastes," Howl commented. "Now where—ah. There it is."

I was gaping around at the drastically different setting, seeing no more birch trees, no snow, just the fog and clouds and the very faint sunlight that filtered through. And then I saw the monster walking towards us. It was huge and clunky and was creaking as it walked, emitting puffs of smoke from what looked like pipes attached to…parts of houses? What the hell? "Holy shit," I remarked as it came to a stop smack in front of us.

Howl tsked. "Language, young lady. It's not becoming of a girl like you."

I huffed. "What planet have you been living on?" Then I realized what I had said and reconsidered my thoughts.

"This country is called Ingary. We're in the Wastes and that's my castle. Come on, you can meet Calcifer and Markl." He strode to what looked like a door on a slight extension that came from the underside of the "castle," evidently not a monster. I followed quietly and meanwhile noticed something about Howl. I knew I was missing something from what I could tell about his personality and I thought I had figured it out. Judging by his mannerisms—flicking his bangs, the confident walk, his manner of speaking—he was overly conceited. He had every right to be, looking like he did, but I saw through him to his arrogance. _ Probably thinks he can get whatever he wants_, I thought. How predictable. Well, his flirting with me certainly wasn't going to get him anywhere.

He opened the door for me and I walked inside and up a few steps. They led to a messy living room that looked like it had gone years without being cleaned, although the fire was well stoked. That was the next thing I noticed. The flame in the center of the hearth had what were unmistakably two eyes that were staring at me and a gaping mouth.

"Ohmygawd!" I shrieked and slammed backwards into what must have been Howl, because I heard an "Oof!" and turned to see him crashing backwards down the steps and into the door. He groaned.

"Ahhhh! Sorry, sorry! But—wha—it—huh?" I spluttered oh-so-coherently, looking back and forth from Howl to the fire and back again. I hurried over to Howl and bent over him anxiously, forgetting his personality for the moment. "Are you okay? I'm such a klutz," I muttered.

"It's fine, it's fine, I'm—ow—" he grimaced as he stood. Ascending the stairs again, following me, he waved a hand at the fire. "Jeez. Sophie, this is Calcifer. Calcifer, yes, this is Sophie."

"Am I really enough to spur that kind of reaction?" the flame, apparently "Calcifer," huffed.

Howl sighed. "Cal, she's never exactly seen a fire demon before—you know they don't have magic in her world."

This was getting freakier by the second and I wanted some answers. No one ever told me anything at home and I always seemed to be the confused one left out and left behind, so I had to get all my information by less-than-traditional methods most of the time. I was sick of it and it certainly wasn't going to continue here. "Okay, _Howl_, you owe me some explanations," I jabbed a finger at him.

He looked surprised. What, he expected me to sit back and be quietly clueless? "What exactly about?"

"Everything! Who I'm supposed to resemble, and where'd you come from and how, and what's all this about "my world," and what the hell with the demon!"

Calcifer didn't help matters by choosing to burst out laughing. "Whooo, Howl, you sure were right about them being different there from here."

I gave him a look. "Now that just made absolutely so sense whatsoever."

Howl chuckled. "Why don't you sit down, Sophie." He gestured toward the couch in front of Calcifer and pulled up a chair for himself. "Now. I'll start by asking _you_ something. What do you know about past lives?"

I blinked. That was definitely not on my list of relevant topics. "Not too much. Well, I like the idea of it, and I'd like to think that who we've been makes a difference to who we are."

"Whew. That makes it a little easier, right?" Calcifer looked at Howl.

"Hardly," Howl said dryly. "As you may or may not have guessed, Sophie, I am a wizard and am most definitely not from your world."

I took a deep breath. "Another world, yes. Wizard, not so much."

"Well, I am, and quite a fabulous one at that." Jeez, he was vain. "Everyone gets reincarnated, Sophie, and witches and wizards come back especially soon after they die. If they lived an overall good life, they'll come back with their powers of magic still fully intact. However, if they had used their magic for entirely selfish or destructive reasons during their life, the chances are good that they'll be cut off from magic when they come back. And, very rarely, if a person, magical or not, does something exceptionally world-changing for the better, something huge, they can come back with some memories of their past lives. It's a great advantage, knowing what's happened to you in other lifetimes. It's like having insight into your own mentality that you just can't get by being only yourself.

But sometimes—and this is where we get to you—if a witch or wizard dies a particularly dishonorable and unfair death, their soul will be damaged, and they won't come back for a little bit longer than usually happens. Also, when they are reborn, they retain their magic but have no idea of it and can go their whole life without realizing it." He looked a little exhausted from the long-winded and up-front explanation.

I took all of this in slowly. The idea made sense. A lot of sense. But witches? Magic? He wasn't kidding about the different worlds. And also… "Wait. "This is where we get to _me_"? Was I… something else in a past life?"

"Yes," Howl said quietly. "You were a witch."

**A/N: Ooh… Cheesy, I know, but I couldn't help myself. I kind of loved Sophie's freak-out at Calcifer, myself. Comments/reviews greatly appreciated!**


	3. Chapter 3

**February Breath**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Howl's Moving Castle, trust me, you'd know it.**

**A/N: This chapter's longer than the ones before (finally) which I personally like better. A little funny stuff comes from Calcifer's end of things—the rest is Howl doing some explaining (as well as some slithering-out) to Sophie and some dramatic emotional stuff by Howl at the end—gasp!—a little something unexpected too, I'm hoping. Oh, and the song that inspired me along the way light make more sense. You know what to do: enjoy and comment!**

You take the breath right out of me

_And left a hole where my heart should be_

_You gotta fight just to make it through_

_Cause I will be the death of you_

Breath – Breaking Benjamin

**Chaper 3:**

I gasped, shaking my head uncomprehendingly. Me? Magic? _A different world…_

"It was the year 1693…" Howl began.

I groaned. "You're kidding. The Salem Witch Trials? Really?"

Howl gave me an odd look. "How do you know that?"

"I don't know, I just have a good memory with dates and stuff. I probably learned it in U. S. History or something."

"Well, I was around during that time, too, but I was safe since only women were being targeted. Someone actually saw you doing a spell—you were the only one accused as far as I know that was actually a witch during the entire time of the trials. We were acquainted and were kind of forced to spend time together considering the circumstances, but when you were—" he swallowed hard, "burned at the stake, I decided I'd seek you out in your next life and tell you that I was sorry."

I frowned. "That you were…sorry? For what?"

He sighed. "We lived here in Ingary, in the same town. We knew each other because we were both very gifted with magic. One day we were trying a very delicate and complex spell that was my idea, and something went wrong. We got sent, without a warning, to what's now your world. So we tried to live quiet lives but we couldn't make our friendship too publicly known—it simply wasn't acceptable—yet we needed each other if we were to preserve our powers. You got caught eventually, and…well, I blamed myself for having the idea to do the spell that went us there in the first place. Your death was violent, unjust, and most definitely premature, so yes, you are a witch with no knowledge of your capacities and a broken soul. And you were born into the world that we were both sent into, although I was reborn here. I suppose it was because of the damage to your soul. And you didn't come back for a few hundred years so I kept worrying that I had missed you."

"…Well then." I cleared my throat and tried not to start hyperventilating. "That actually sounds possible, but I'm going to need a little more concrete proof than your word."

Howl gave me a look of mock offense. "What, you don't trust me?"

I crossed my arms and glared at him out of the corner of my eye. "Would you trust a vain, uppity teenage wizard who just suddenly appeared one day to convince you that magic is real with no warning, explanation, or proof to speak of?"

"Saving you in the process—"

"I can most certainly take care of myself—"

"—Hey! Vain?!"

"Absolutely. Did I mention your immediate aura of "I'm a total player"?" I made air quotes.

"Kids these days," Howl grumbled resignedly, obviously looking to annoy me.

"They get more perceptive all the time!" Calcifer cackled.

"Ex_cuse_ me! I'm eighteen next month! What are you, like, nineteen?" I needled his ego.

Howl made a face. "Twenty-two."

We glared at each other for a minute before he continued. "Alright. You wanted proof, right? Do you still have that scar on your left upper arm?"

My eyes got big. "How do you—"

"It looks kind of like a 'W,' right? For 'witch.' They branded you when you were convicted and the scar carried over into your new body."

All I could say was, "_Wow_." Our brief argument vanished from my mind as I got tunnel vision for a second and swayed slightly before regaining my composure. "So to summarize, that's the reason for you showing up," I said faintly.

Howl looked at me worriedly, his attitude taking a sudden turn. "I know it's a lot to take in."

I shook my head. "I'm alright. But…_me_? A witch? I'm just about the clumsiest person on earth, probably not the best for handling spells and whatnot."

Calcifer snorted, reminding me of his presence. _Their arguments were always like that_, he thought to himself. _Usually followed by Howl attempting to kiss Sophie when her guard was down and her hitting him with something_.

I glared at him. "No comments, if you please."

"Sure, sure…" Calcifer muttered, suppressing laughter.

"Well, if you're really alright." Howl stood and walked to a flight of stairs at the back of the room. "Hot water, Calcifer?"

"Yeah, I know," he grumbled back. I looked at the fire demon quizzically. "I pretty much run this castle yet Howl treats me like I'm his slave," he complained. "It burns me up!"

"Yet you can't clean?" I looked around.

"Hello. I'd burn anything I touched. And besides, cleaning usually involves water." He shuddered, at least I guessed that was what he did because he flickered and made a face.

"Well, since I have nothing better to do and I'm still not done talking to Howl, excuse me, I mean his ego…" I shrugged.

At this Calcifer laughed outright. "Finally, a girl who can see straight through Howl! I love it!"

"Thank you?"

"No, it's just that," he snorted, "all the girls are usually falling all over themselves for Howl and all they care about are his looks, and here you are talking about his vanity only ten minutes after meeting him!" He cackled and I'm sure would have been rolling on the floor had he not been…well, you know.

"Hmph. Well I'm not falling over myself for anybody, much less him, so it's perfectly fine." I marched around the room looking for something remotely resembling cleaning supplies.

He narrowed his eyes slyly. "Noooo one?"

"Wouldn't dream of it," I said tightly. I wasn't going to think about that now. "Love is just another way for people to get to you and hurt you and make you think that it was all your fault all along. Friendship is a much better alternative except when someone wants it to be something more, and then it's just weird, but if you're lucky enough to completely skim over that issue, later the one person, they might…" I faltered slightly. "With no warning… No rational incentive…" I took a quiet, shuddering breath. "It's an unnecessary complication that no one needs, at this age anyway."

"I see." Dammit, Calcifer was too smart. He just got me to vent my past issues to him without hardly saying anything to me.

"Hey, a broom!" I said, mostly to drop the painful subject. "Alright, Calcifer. Move it."

"What? What are you doing?" he yelped as I went after the log he was hanging onto with a pair of tongs and deposited him in a bucket. I threw a new log in with him. Didn't want him going out or something like that. "Ahhh no help help help! You crazy lady with tongs!"

"Oh, hush." I swept out the ashes and plopped him back in a clean hearth. "See, isn't that better?"

He huffed, which I took for a yes.

When Howl came downstairs about an hour later, he had a small brown-haired boy in tow. "Sophie, this is Markl. He's my apprentice. Markl, this is Sophie. I've already told you about her."

"Hi Markl," I smiled. He was cute. About ten years old and a little mischievous-looking, almost like Howl. _ Let's hope he isn't teaching him any tricks quite yet_, I thought.

"Hi, Sophie," he said shyly.

"We're going into Porthaven," Howl announced. "We'll be back in a couple hours." He walked to the door and turned the knob, also spinning a dial on the wall by the door so that the blue section of it was facing up. I was wondering what that meant when he opened the door onto a street in what looked like an old-fashioned coastal town and walked away with Markl, the door shutting behind him.

I looked at Calcifer, my brow wrinkling. "We're not in the Wastes anymore?"

"Well, the door has four portals, hence the four colors on the dial. Howl has them set so that the red one goes to Kingsbury, the capital city of Ingary, the blue one to Porthaven, what you just saw, the green one to the Wastes, and the black one…well, no one but Howl knows where that one goes."

I stared at the demon for a second before grinning and bouncing off across the room, pushing up the sleeves of my sweatshirt. "That is so _cool_!" I squealed uncharacteristically.

"Um, glad you think…so…?"

* * *

Sophie had been sweeping (no pun intended) through the living room cleaning everything she came across, for once actually getting some gratification and happiness out of the work. As she worked her dancer instincts won over and she had been starting to hum to herself as a song popped into her head. Calcifer was taking a nap, and she reveled in the temporary solitude to let her thoughts wander and autopilot take over her actions.

She became so absorbed that she didn't even notice when the door opened and Howl started up the steps into the room. He froze, halfway up, when he saw Sophie.

A contented smile was on her face as her bare feet whispered across the wooden floor. She still had a broom in her hands and was nearly dancing around the room doing the last of the cleaning. She pivoted towards the door and her large gray eyes lighted on Howl.

All Howl could think was how beautiful she was. She had always been that way; it just seemed that in this life she didn't know it yet. However, she had also always rejected his love and had a tendency to get violent about it when he got too persistent. This Sophie tended to have a little more self-control, though, he thought.

She had stopped, breathing a little fast, just staring at Howl. She shook herself. "It's not polite to sneak up on people, you know."

"I wasn't sneaking anywhere, you just don't pay enough attention," Howl retorted, snapping out of it. "And besides, it's my castle. Which is actually hardly recognizable." He looked around in wonder.

"Erm, speaking of unrecognizable…" Calcifer popped up in the hearth. "I was thinking a minute ago. What happens when someone from Kingsbury picking up a spell comes in here and sees Sophie?"

Howl laughed. "She's just a girl, Cal, what's the matter?" Sophie bit back a snappy response.

"Go outside, Howl, and tell me if you see any teenage girls wearing…whatever it is you're wearing." Calcifer directed the last part at Sophie.

"What, jeans and a sweatshirt? What's the big deal?" Sophie thought for a second. "Oh. _Oh_. Oh, jeez, don't tell me they all wear dresses and all that here."

"Different world, my dear Sophie, a different world," Howl sighed dramatically, confirming her thoughts.

"So, tell me then, oh wise wizard Howl, how do you propose I fix this? I can't exactly magic myself into new clothes," she scoffed, struggling out of her heavy sweatshirt to reveal a simple green t-shirt.

Howl looked at her pointedly and she realized what she had just said and gasped. "Oh, you're kidding."

"Well, you've only just awakened to your powers today, but the exposure to magic so far should have helped a little. Maybe you can pull something out of your past memories. Try it."

"Alright, but I thought you said that only the really good people got their memories of other lives back," she narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

He ran a hand through his hair. "You caught that, huh? Hmph. It's worth a try anyway, just see if you can come up with a place, a name, maybe some words…" He wasn't going to tell her quite yet how amazing they'd been together in their past lives; enough to gain their old memories back. He still remembered the first time they met, thousands of years ago.

She bit her lip but nodded, sinking to sit on the floor. She closed her eyes and forced herself to think back. Way back. She became younger in her mind slowly. She was thirteen; nine; six; two; before that, not much came except for faint images that danced just beyond her reach, as if a translucent veil covered the paths through her mind… Then something stirred. She felt smaller but knew she was older than eighteen, even though she knew she was remembering before she had been born, somehow…and she was terrified of blood.

That gave her a shock and her eyes snapped open to see Howl's cerulean ones staring at her concernedly. "I was scared of blood," she whispered. It was strange. In this life—funny as that sounded—she didn't think she'd ever minded blood. All the kids had done the needle-prick blood type test in biology, and all she ever feared was actual needles, like for a flu shot or whatever. Maybe that was the just the interpretation of the fear that this day and age had taken.

"Sophie?" Howl still looked worried. "Was that all?"

"I…don't know," she said quietly, forgetting for the moment how much Howl annoyed her. "Is that even accurate, or am I going crazy?"

"Oh, that was very accurate. You were absolutely petrified of it. Ironic that you were burned," his voice broke slightly in an unusually potent wave of emotion.

Sophie shuddered at the thought. _I'm glad I don't remember dying. That's horrible._ Then she had a slightly off-topic thought. "Wait, if you got through to…my world…and brought me back, then how come we stuck around there when we got there by accident in the 17th century? Jeez, that sounds weird."

Howl chuckled briefly. "We were close to figuring out the spell and all to do just that when you were taken." He didn't want to think about why and how the people had caught her working her spells. He knew he was responsible for that, too—another thing he hadn't mentioned to Sophie— although he couldn't seem to remember any of it. Not tipping someone off, not showing them where to find her. Only watching her die through cold eyes. To this day he wondered why, through his memories, he hadn't seemed to care for the girl he'd realized he loved. In every life after the first, he sold his heart to one demon or another, like Calcifer. Sophie always returned it to him, usually unknowingly, and always just before her premature death. It was always early. And it was always, in one way or another, Howl's fault. But he could never remember the details of what he did to cause it. He thought his subconscious must have blocked the memories, disgusted with himself for his unforgivable and repulsive actions. Now, in this life, he was trying so hard to unearth real emotions for Sophie from within himself, even though he had no heart.

**A/N: Awww Howl's such a mess. There's some more explanations for ya. (And the song should make some more sense now, yes?) I'm warning you now: what Howl tells Sophie is almost never the complete truth so the same stories may seem to contradict each other at times! Comment and ask me what's going on if you're just altogether too confused. (But I think it gets clearer.) Actually, you know what? Comment anyway!! **


	4. Chapter 4

**February Breath**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Howl's Moving Castle, trust me, you'd know it.**

**A/N: Tek and Soar, thanks so much for the reviews! Soar: thanks for the feedback- I was kind of questioning myself on that too, it's something I need to work on. I always have a tendency to throw all this information out there just so I can get to the more eventful parts…I could have made that more interesting. *sighs* Well either way, I'm liking my chapters better the farther I get—more exciting. Some emotional drama, turmoil, et cetera, which sadly I love to write. Lol! Also Howl in all his hotness being sketchy (haha also fun to write!) Enjoy and comment**

You take the breath right out of me

_And left a hole where my heart should be_

_You gotta fight just to make it through_

_Cause I will be the death of you_

Breath – Breaking Benjamin

**Chapter 4:**

"I see I've retained my incredible timing," Sophie sighed. "Oh, and I got a little bit of something about myself. I was shorter than I am now, I'd say about five foot four, but in my mind I could tell that I was older."

"You were twenty-four; I was twenty-seven," he waved a hand impatiently. "But we really should figure out if you're capable of doing magic at this point. What are your strengths?"

She snorted. "None to speak of whatsoever."

"Stop insulting yourself, you're killing me here." Howl made a pained face. "Fine, what do you _like_ to do, then?"

Sophie thought for a minute. "I dance…you figured that out," she shot him a disgruntled look. He smiled back, looking like an angel. "And, um, I guess I have a knack for chemistry. Although most of the time it doesn't end well for the rest of the room…" She winced, remembering a particularly—ah, _exciting_—day in chem class. Oops.

Howl coughed to cover a laugh, guessing at her thoughts. "Go on."

"And…well, I'm planning to go to college to maybe study computational or psycholinguistics, although morphology and syntax seem like they'd be more—you don't even know what that is, do you." It was more of a statement than a question. She loved the linguistics field, but she wasn't sure what path she would take.

Howl looked offended. "Of course I do!" Then he looked at her slyly. "It means you have a gift with tongues."

Sophie exhaled emphatically and rolled her eyes. What an idiot. Shameless player. "Sure. You wanna call it that, whatever. That's about it."

"That's _all_? Come on, you have to give me more than that. That can't be all your hopes and dreams and fears from your whole life stuck in a few sentences."

"Wellll…" Sophie had never told anyone this particular detail of her many impossible wishes. "I've never been afraid of heights at all, so before I die I want to climb Mount Everest and go skydiving. I suppose it's impossible, like, how could I ever pull that off? But still."

What Howl did next just about gave Sophie a heart attack. He laughed like a crazy person, jumping out of his seat. "_I knew it!_" he shouted. Sophie was baffled. Howl reached over and picked her up, twirling her around in a circle before setting her on the floor again. "I knew it really was you! Did you hear that, Calcifer?!"

Calcifer faked a yawn while Sophie stared at Howl. "What was that? Sorry, I missed that entire exchange, can I have an instant playback, please?"

"Oh, stop it, Cal, you know you're relieved too."

"Excuse me, but _what_ proved that I'm who I'm supposed to be which I don't even remember?" Sophie planted a hand on her hip.

"It was—we—before—you always—I'll show you!" Howl was practically incoherent. "But, uh, first let me fix something. Close your eyes and don't move. That's important."

"_You're_ asking _me_ to close my eyes and not move," Sophie said dryly. Howl nodded impatiently, telling her to hurry up. "Fine," she gave in reluctantly, squeezing her eyes shut and attempting to stay perfectly still. After a second she felt a delicate tingling all over her that spoke to her intuition, telling her that Howl was working some kind of magic on either her or something in very close proximity to her. But, knowing Howl, if she moved he'd probably make something explode by accident, so she stayed still to wait it out. When the feeling went away, after several bursts, she opened her eyes tentatively and felt a little different. She was also ticked off that Howl had magicked her without warning her, so she acted on that first by stepping towards him and reaching up to smack him upside the head.

"Agghh! What was that for?!"

"You did magic on me without telling me it'd be magic?!"

"My god, you really haven't changed—you can thank me later, by the way." He flicked his fingers and a full-length mirror appeared between them.

Sophie's eyes got big as she took stock of the girl in the mirror, momentarily forgetting her annoyance. She was thin and of medium height, with long brown waves of hair and big, unusually gray eyes. That wasn't anything new, though. What was different was that she was wearing an ankle-length, simple green dress with a scoop neck and three-quarter length sleeves. Looking at the drapes of the skirt, Sophie decided that one could spin for hours and never be bored with that dress on. She truly registered in a moment that that was her in the mirror.

Howl poked his head around the side of the mirror cautiously. "Did I get it right?" he asked.

Sophie's previous anger with him had all but vanished from her mind and she managed to choke out a few words. "It's beautiful…" she murmured. It was old-style, like something a princess would wear, but simplified, and she absolutely loved it. It was almost familiar to her, like she used to dress this way but hadn't in years.

"About four hundred years, to be exact," Calcifer unexpectedly piped up, carrying on her train of thought perfectly.

"I suppose that's right—wait! What did you just say?" Sophie stared at him.

"Demon thing. Don't worry, I don't do it _all _the time."

"Of course. What else?" Sophie said under her breath.

"I think you look gorgeous, too. Come on, let's go." Howl ignored the demon and the surprise on Sophie's face at the compliment.

Sophie had a moment of déjà vu as she remembered her sisters telling her the same thing not too long ago. Martha and Lettie had been fussing with their identical flawless blond hair, which had only made dark-haired Sophie feel even more dejected and overlooked next to her prettier sisters.

"_Why did I have to get the boring looks?" she had sighed, apparently not as quietly as she had thought._

"_Stop that," Lettie had scolded. "Give yourself some credit."_

"_You just don't use what you have!" Sixteen-year-old Martha added on._

"_Which isn't much to speak of in the first place," Sophie pointed out._

"_Is too!" her sisters had protested in unison. When Sophie gave them a look that dared them to name a few things, Martha continued. "You're prettier than you think, and I'm not just saying that because I'm your sister. If only you'd pay attention to how people look at you."_

"_Not to mention interpret the look correctly," Lettie said. She was seventeen. "And you know that your grades are better than both of ours combined, and, my god, girl, you can sure dance! You really are good, so I don't understand why you don't let anyone see you."_

"_Do something for yourself for once; it's your life, Sophie," said Martha._

_Sophie had just sighed._

"_I think you look gorgeous, too. Now let's go." Martha dragged her out the door with Lettie's help._

Sophie shook off the memory and gave an unladylike snort at Howl's opinion. "Right. I bet I was better-looking in my other lives. Anything's better than this," she murmured to herself, but Howl caught it anyway.

"Sophie, Sophie. When are you going to accept that you're beautiful?"

"Never. I can't accept something that isn't true." She responded matter-of-factly. He was just trying to get the moves on her, she knew it. Although she didn't understand why. Oh, wait—just kidding, she did understand. He was an unabashed and self-proclaimed womanizer.

"Hasn't anyone ever told you that before?"

"Yeah, my sisters and my parents. Family. Big deal." She shrugged. "And—" she bit her lip at the last second as her throat constricted.

Howl pried without meaning to, encouraging her to go on.

"No one. Nothing," she snapped suddenly. "Where did you want to take me? Let's go." She was desperate to forget about the memory of…_him_.

Howl let it go and brightened immediately. "Alright! Come on!" He was so impatient that he took her around the waist and immediately took off up the stairs, quite literally. Sophie was sure that neither of their feet ever touched the floor. He sped down the hallway and stopped at another narrow flight of stairs that Sophie hadn't noticed in the one or two times she'd been on the second floor of the castle. He motioned for her to go first and she was amused by the fact that she had a skirt to pick up to navigate the narrow, low-ceilinged stairwell. "Come on, Sophie, you can go faster than that," Howl teased her.

"You try doing this in a dress, see how you like it." She had a thought and spun suddenly to look at him. He quickly shifted his eyes to her face, but not quickly enough. Sophie sighed. "Were you staring at my ass?"

Predictably, he grinned insolently. "And why not?"

She rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips, and was about to continue her ascent in the near-darkness when a slight shudder shook the steps. She bit back a shriek of surprise when she lost her balance and was sure she'd go tumbling backwards, but Howl caught her in his arms. _He planned that, the idiot_, she thought. Even with him a step below her he was still taller, and it didn't seem like he was planning on letting go.

After a minute she said, "Howl?"

"Shh. I'm enjoying the moment. It's not all the time I could—can catch you like this," he murmured in her ear, making her shiver.

"And don't you forget it," she retorted swiftly. He smiled and unwrapped his arms from around her and continued to lead her upwards. A trapdoor at the top opened with a flick of his fingers and the two emerged onto a flat spot on top of the castle.

"Alright," he turned to her, his eyes sparkling like sapphires. "Now I need you to concentrate very hard on something. It might be a little weird to try, but focus on what it would feel like to be skydiving, free falling. Zero in on your emotions, on the slightest details. And yes, you'll want to close your eyes. Don't worry—you'll be doing the real magic, not me." He practically read her mind. "And no matter what, keep concentrating harder. You can't break it off until I say so, alright?"

Sophie nodded, exhaled, and then closed her eyes obediently, thinking about what she had wanted so badly for years but known to be impossible. The air would be rushing past her face and she wouldn't be thinking about the ground rushing up to meet her faster and faster. She would only have the feeling of exhilaration, of adrenaline, of utter freedom…

There was an aching, then tearing pain in her back near her shoulderblades. She gritted her teeth, remembering Howl's words, and made the image in her head more vivid.

Howl

God, but she was stubborn. Just like the last life. She was hanging on to the spell (even if she didn't recognize it as a spell yet) like her life depended on it. I would have liked to think that she was hanging on my every word, but she wasn't—she was just afraid of what would happen if her concentration broke. As I watched and did my own spell with much less effort, her jaw clenched and she looked like she wanted to scream. I didn't blame her one bit. The first time was always the hardest and the most painful. I hardly felt anything now and didn't like to remember my own first time. Her back arched and I thought the sun glinted off something shiny in the corner of her eye. A tear?

She had refused to cry, ever, in the last life. Even when I had resorted to force to make her try to love me and completely torn her life apart in the last life, she had never shown her hurt much. I had thought she had had no emotions at all, but later realized that she was even more attentive to feelings than Calcifer was to me during the times that he had my heart, like right now. Then she had broken the curse that tied me to the fire demon and my heart was restored to me. But she had still refused to love me. I still admired her for that, I guessed. She had managed to reject me on first sight and never give up. She had also had an incredible temper for such a small girl. After a while, she cooled down, though, and resorted to sarcasm and nonviolence in response to my advances. What she hadn't known about that spell we were trying that cursed day was that there was an underlying layer that would put a powerful love spell on her. I had tried to tell myself that she wouldn't hate me for doing that to her, but something backfired anyway and my only problem was being both inadvertently and directly responsible for her death. What a way to pay. Even if I could never remember what I had done to actually kill her no matter how I tried, it still haunted me.

I watched her now, my own spell complete, and smiled as hers finished off and her pain visibly lessened.

"Okay. You're done now. You can open your eyes." I had forgotten how she somehow became even more beautiful sometimes.

Sophie

I let go of the vision and opened my eyes tentatively. The pain was gone, but now I just felt _heavy_, like my back was being weighed down. But the first thing I registered was Howl.

His hair had turned the color of a raven's wing, something that threw me for a loop right away. But that was nothing.

From his back protruded two gigantic, gorgeous raven-black wings that glared blue and purple in the setting sunlight. Smiling gently, he looked like a dark angel. "Look at yourself," he murmured to me.

I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and turned my head quickly, and just about passed out.

The weight on my back was two wings of my own. So he had gotten me to do a spell somehow. It was amazing. Had I really just worked magic to do that? I thought incredulously. I could definitely get used to this witch stuff. They were pure white, like snow, shining silver in the light. I found that I could move them, just as easily as if I were moving my arm.

* * *

As she gazed in wonder at what she had done, Howl grinned wickedly with an idea. Sophie's attention was immediately on him. "What," she asked warily.

"Let's go!" he shouted, grabbing her around the waist again and jumping off the edge of the castle.

It was the oddest sensation to not fall and go splat, Sophie thought absently, immediately viciously beating down the memory that came along with that notion. Howl held her to him tightly as his wings carried them through a space in the cloudbank that they were above, emerging in a sunny grassland with flowers everywhere and a lake. It was so pretty that Sophie asked where they were.

"My uncle, who was a wizard, gave me this place to be my private study when I was younger. I spent a lot of time here by myself." He suddenly laughed openly and took both her hands tight in his, letting her drop below him.

"HOWL!"

"Yes?"

"What are you doing?! I'm not exactly adapted to this yet!"

"Don't worry—you still have your instincts. Try to remember. Remember how it felt to fly." He pulled her back up to hold her in his arms again, partially to pacify her and partially to attempt to awaken some real emotion inside himself for her. Too bad he still had no heart to feel with

Sophie

I concentrated hard, closing my eyes against all my mind's protests. Racking my brain for memories of the past, I could catch glimpses of how I had loved to fly and had always wanted to keep flying, even when it became difficult to become fully human again. But Howl had been having much more trouble with that than I had. I soon knew about his curse and how his lack of a heart affected him, and somehow had restored his heart.

Lost in my thoughts of the past, I certainly remembered more than flying. I remembered helping Howl to cast that spell gone wrong. I had just sensed something was wrong. There was another spell concealed underneath this one and it was pretty strong. It had taken me a moment to figure out its nature: love. He _wouldn't_. That was just _evil._ I had thought, for a while by then, that the nature of Howl himself was evil. Once he had his heart back I had thought maybe he would be cured, but I knew at that moment that even I couldn't erase the past—what he'd done to me in every life. He realized that I knew what was going on in the same instant and both our concentrations broke, causing something to the equivalent of a bomb and sending us both spiraling into darkness. My last view of Ingary had been that field of flowers.

I barely stopped myself from screaming out loud again.

Howl

I looked down at her face and had a panic attack. She looked like she was watching someone being murdered, a shocked look on her pretty face.

"Sophie? Sophie. What's wrong?" When I got no response I quickly cast the walking-on-air spell and landed in midair with Sophie. She fell to her knees, looking like a stricken angel, her eyes blank and seeing nothing. Nothing here, at least. I feared the worst. _Her memories…_ I thought. "Tell me what's wrong. Sophie, you're scaring me!" And she really was, despite my lack of feelings. Still no answer.

After a minute of me becoming increasingly agitated and Sophie looking increasingly horrified, her breath got shaky and she blinked a couple times. She probably noticed that we were kneeling in the middle of the air but decided that what she had to say was more important.

"_You tricked me!_" she suddenly screeched.

I fell backwards off my heels. "…What?"

"You didn't tell me the whole truth before! You put an extra spell in to make me love you! Like you thought I wouldn't notice? How could you even do that to me in the first place? Like you could force me? I thought I had gotten you your heart back! We were right here, and we fell into another world and to my _death_!"

"Sophie," I choked. "How could I have told you? You hardly knew me a few hours ago. And that was several lifetimes ago for me. You _did_ change me, after that. And I was having doubts about doing it anyway. But it was still all my fault! Do you understand now why I came to say I was sorry?"

"I don't know what to believe anymore!" she cried, and with that, she unknowingly broke the spell holding her up and she began to plummet towards the earth.

I was about to take off after her, because in this state no way would she be able to use her wings. Then I saw the dark mass shooting toward her from the west, much too fast for me to even register before she was enveloped in what looked like a stormcloud and whisked back in the direction the cloud had come from. I realized what it was all too late. Oh, shit. How could I have been so stupid to forget? Of all times? Or maybe because of the time. Either way: shit.

Without hesitation I took off back towards my castle, not even bothering to use the door but crashing through a window before rolling and standing up again in front of Calcifer. His eyes widened to the size of saucers.

"Due west! Now! And don't let Markl outside." I sounded panicked, even to my own ears.

"How far? Where's Sophie?" Calcifer looked uncharacteristically scared out of his wits, possibly taking his lead from me.

"Trust me, you'll know when to stop. Sophie is where we're going. Think about that, Calcifer. What's in the west?" I said hurriedly when the demon looked even more confused.

"Oh, _no_. Just out of nowhere? No warning whatsoever?"

I confirmed his fears. "It came up so fast I didn't even have time to process that it was there before it…took her…" I choked on my words.

"She's getting stronger, then," he hissed. "Curse the Witch of the Waste!"

"I only wish I could."

* * *

Sophie was being carried through the air by what resembled the interior of a stormcloud. It seemed like she shouldn't have been able to breathe, but she could. Something inside her tingled as she sensed a presence. Not _in_ the cloud—more like the essence of the cloud itself. And it was without a doubt evil.

In a matter of mere seconds she was suddenly just inside the heavy iron doors of a great hall. It was expensive-looking and might have been beautiful, except that it was so…so…_dark_. There was light, all right, but the feel of the room was sending Sophie a clear message: _this is not a good place to be_. The foreboding feeling of evil was emanating from everything around her, particularly from the end of the hall, although the cloud had suddenly disappeared.

A woman sat on what might have been a kind of throne at the far end of the hall, but she was so ridiculously overweight that Sophie couldn't tell what it was she sat on. The woman was dressed all in purple, complete with an elaborate hat, and her hair was a tangle of red curls. She looked like someone who might have been very beautiful in her day, but was now past her time. And she was unmistakably corrupted by evil. Yet somehow, Sophie felt that she knew the woman. She was vaguely familiar but it was not at all a friendly feeling that she got. Someone from a past life, perhaps? _Maybe she was the one to accuse me of witchcraft_, Sophie thought grimly. _That would certainly be appropriate_. She didn't really know what to do, so she began the walk down the hall at a brisk but not too fast pace to confront the woman. As she got closer, the feeling of recognition deepened and the woman looked slightly amused at the look of defiance on the girl's face. Sophie stopped a bit in front of her and attempted to bob an awkward curtsy out of instinct, not quite sure what to expect.

When the woman said nothing Sophie spoke. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I don't believe I know you. Can you tell me where this is, please?"

After another moment of looking amused, the woman replied. "So this is your latest form. Always so close to the original. Did Howl tell you that yet? Or has he been hiding _everything_ from you?"

Sophie stiffened at Howl's name and at what this woman seemed to know about her. "I beg your pardon?"

"You know perfectly well of what and whom I speak."

She gritted her teeth. "I'm sorry, but I would like to know where I am, and why I am here. And who exactly you are, if you please."

"Standing up to the Witch of the Waste—that's plucky." The woman's—the witch's—mocking smile widened.

"Witch…of the Waste?" Sophie muttered in confusion. The witch part was obvious enough, but the Wastes? Wasn't that where the green portal went in—she forced herself to think the name—Howl's castle?

"So he _has _been keeping things from you. Quite necessary information, if you ask me. Allow me to fill in the blanks." She paused for effect. "I was very much in love with Howl, and I found out that his heart had been stolen by a demon. I wanted him to have it back, and I thought he would love me after he could feel again. But _you_: you came along. And he said that he saw me for what I was: not beautiful, but twisted and evil. As if! And he left and you were the one to give his heart back instead! It was supposed to be _me_! He was _mine_!" She snarled.

Sophie exhaled in confusion, trying to make the pieces fit together. "Look, I don't remember any of this, and how are you so sure it was me—"

"_Silence!_"

Sophie's body was shaken with pain at the same time as the screech. Against all her will and instinct, she nearly doubled over, clutching at her torso and biting back a pathetic whimper.

"_You will pay for what you did to me!_"

The pain got worse. Sophie now clamped down on a scream, feeling like she would break, no, be ripped apart at the seams if she didn't physically hold herself together. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her slightly blurry vision, looked back up at the Witch, and became sure that she was hallucinating. Because standing by the Witch…was _him_.

**A/N: Sorry, I just had to leave you with a cliffhanger :P This was a longer chapter, which I personally like better. So now I'm curious to know: who do you think is this guy that Sophie keeps referring to in her thoughts only with pronouns, and refuses to think about? Keep in mind the "past issues" that she vented to Calcifer in Chapter 3. Comment and tell me your ideas! **


	5. Chapter 5

**February Breath**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Howl's Moving Castle, trust me, you'd know it.**

**A/N: Picking up where we left off at that wonderful cliffhanger… Warning: some intense emotional crap that may just tear your heart to pieces. (Assuming you have one. Any hot, dark, mysterious boys missing one, just call me!) Sophie is put through a lot of emotional pain; actually something I can write about but can't really enjoy, per say, for obvious reasons. Includes a flashback of Sophie's. Enjoy and comment please :)**

You take the breath right out of me

_And left a hole where my heart should be_

_You gotta fight just to make it through_

_Cause I will be the death of you_

Breath – Breaking Benjamin

**To recap from the last chapter:**

"_You will pay for what you did to me!_"

The pain got worse. Sophie now clamped down on a scream, feeling like she would break, no, be ripped apart at the seams if she didn't physically hold herself together. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her slightly blurry vision, looked back up at the Witch, and became sure that she was hallucinating. Because standing by the Witch…was _him_.

**And on to Chapter 5:**

He looked just like she remembered him—tall and somewhat skinny, with blond, wavy hair and hazel eyes.

He had been her best friend.

They had almost loved each other but had agreed to abandon the idea for the sake of their friendship.

She had tried to save him.

And she had failed.

Failure.

And it had cost him his life.

…Hadn't it?

* * *

The pain the Witch was sending her way ebbed to a stop but was replaced by a pain more real than any magic could simulate.

There was a boy who was undoubtedly her best friend, standing there, plain as day, but unlike himself in that he was completely drained of emotion.

The Witch flicked her hand, the motion full of contempt and cruelty, and Sophie's mind was forced to resurrect and watch past events that she had never wanted to think of again.

**Flashback: One year ago**

"Justin?"

He turned slowly to her voice and smiled faintly. _It was for the best_, he thought. Assuming he actually died. With any luck, he'd never come back. He knew it would only lead to both of their destructions.

"Justin! What are you doing?" she cried up at him through the wind that was whipping through the cloudless, impossibly blue sky that was nevertheless laced with a few February snowflakes. Her eyes were filled with fear as she considered the unrelenting, unchangeable possibilities of what her friend was about to do.

He took a breath. "Goodbye," he said softly and knew that she had read his lips. _I hope this saves you_.

And he leaned forward, spreading his arms, falling off the edge of the building.

"Justin, NO!" she screamed again. Without so much as a millisecond's consideration or even a conscious decision, she jumped in his direction off of the shorter building's rooftop where she had been standing. She didn't know what she had been thinking. How could she save someone from the unforgiving ground below, rushing up increasingly fast? It seemed like the fall lasted a year, but at the same time a few seconds. She reached toward him in midair, free falling, before he looked at her with shock and alarm on his face and the ground met them both. But Justin had been falling longer. Farther. Harder. _No! She wasn't supposed to follow me. She can't…oh, please live, Sophie._

And that was Justin's last conscious thought, although Sophie never knew that.

She was sure her arm was broken, and she felt like she'd been torched while hit by an eighteen-wheeler, but she dragged herself a few feet to where her best friend lay. The crowd that had gathered to see the spectacle was crying out in alarm but she ignored them, wanting to get to Justin before anyone else did. Just by looking at him, she could instantly tell that all or most of his ribs were broken and he had only seconds left, assuming internal hemorrhaging or lung puncture were his only concerns. Which they weren't. His leg stuck out at an odd angle and he obviously had a severe concussion. Sophie's focus was entirely on him, even though she was barely holding onto her own consciousness.

But the last thing she saw him do was look at her and smile weakly. Relieved she was alive, at least. He was gone. But that was what needed to happen. Much better…than helping _her_…to…

Goodbye, Sophie. I love you.

And he closed his eyes and sighed his last sigh.

"Wha…no…no…Justin. It's alright, you'll be fine, just stay with me. Justin wake up. You're okay, Justin, please! Justin! NO!" she collapsed into incoherent, screaming sobs and wouldn't speak, wouldn't answer any questions for over a week. Not in the hospital, not from her mother, not from her friends who left her voicemails, not even from Maria.

No one.

Because it was all her fault.

**End Flashback**

She couldn't believe what—who—why—she was seeing. Justin was…dead. He had died a year ago, and she had almost died herself trying to save him. The only thing that had saved her was her shorter fall. She had seen what he was doing, where he was standing on the roof, and had raced inside to get to him before he did the unthinkable. She had reached a lower point than where he was and wanted a chance to talk him out of his out-of-the-blue and inexplicable actions, but was still too late.

The Witch smiled cruelly.

"Justin" remained expressionless.

A winged creature the size of a man crashed through the window, her pain, and her memories. It scooped her up quickly but gently and shot out another window in the roof of the hall.

* * *

Howl looked down anxiously at Sophie. She was clearly delirious and was sobbing and hyperventilating uncontrollably in his arms. _What could make her feel like this?_ he wondered. The Witch couldn't inflict nearly enough physical pain to contract that kind of response from her. Wait. Physical pain. He grew angry and his hold on Sophie tightened. _What from the past had the Witch brought up? What could she have shown her, or made her remember? Her deaths? I don't think so. She wouldn't understand them enough to do this in response._

He decided to stop thinking about it, and when he looked down at her again as they approached his castle without being followed, he saw she was asleep but tears continued to carve their way across her ivory skin.

He put her to bed in his own room, feeling a wave of protectiveness—of near-real emotion—as he watched her sleep. It was night anyway. He'd sleep on the couch, he decided as he closed the door gently.

"She's a clear case of survivor's guilt," Howl told Calcifer downstairs. "I could tell that much from her mind but she's in too much pain and turmoil for me to get anything else. Why does she feel guilty, though? Who was it? I doubt it was actually her fault. It never is," he added quietly.

"Her parents are alive, right? And her best friend?" Calcifer asked, to which Howl nodded. "Maybe it was another friend," Calcifer hypothesized. "They can be harder to deal with than losing, for example, older family members. That much I know about humans. But for what purpose would the Witch be torturing her with that? What's the significance?"

Howl sighed. "I just don't know. If—and only if—Sophie can talk about it, maybe she can tell me a little something. Maybe what the Witch did, if nothing else." His fists clenched. How could anyone, anything, hurt Sophie so much, and who would dare to do it?

Upstairs, Sophie began to have a nightmare: it was an exact replica of the last few moments of what had happened on that February day a year ago. Feeling helpless, useless, not quick enough to save her friend.

Howl sensed her fear and discomfort through an empathy spell he'd put on her and he ran back upstairs silently, knowing she was dreaming. She was sobbing again, tossing so much he was afraid she'd fall off the bed.

He cast the spell to see into her dreams, catching the end of her nightmare.

He saw what happened.

Detaching himself slightly from the main events, he looked around and saw himself standing in the crowd, watching Sophie, who had no idea that he even existed yet, muttering words under his breath that worked the spells to keep her alive.

He understood now that she hadn't been attempting suicide along with Justin. She had been trying to save him. He understood it all now.

At least, he thought he did.

Sophie woke up, her mouth open in a silent scream, lurching into a sitting position to see Howl sitting by her. Without thinking about who he was, how selfish, cowardly, and everything else, she unhesitatingly threw her arms around his neck and sobbed into his shirt. His initial surprise wore off in a second and he held her as she cried shamelessly. She hadn't let tears escape her in an entire year.

A/N: A shorter chapter, yes, but I figured enough went on to make up for it. Do you get what happened now? :) You now know who "_he_" was. I thought it might be interesting to add in a character's name from the actual movie (I confess—the book is still on my to-read list!) so I added my own twist. But it keeps on twisting! *gasp* Rate and review please! (And don't worry: I promise happier thoughts later on.)


	6. Chapter 6

**February Breath**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Howl's Moving Castle, **_**I'd**_** be the one clinging to Howl. But I don't. So I'm not. However sad that may be.**

**A/N: Alright. Here we've got less of the shattering pain but still more epiphanies. Howl realizes some things and eventually Sophie goes into another flashback…like, waaaay back. Enjoy and comment :)**

You take the breath right out of me

_And left a hole where my heart should be_

_You gotta fight just to make it through_

_Cause I will be the death of you_

Breath – Breaking Benjamin

**Chapter 6:**

Howl

I blinked in shock before bringing my arms up to hold her to me, feeling her tears soak through onto my chest. "Shh. It's alright. You're safe now," I murmured, stroking her hair while trying to sort out what had happened.

I remembered a year back myself. I had begun watching Sophie, and none too soon, because the Witch of the Waste had found her too. She was still after Sophie because I loved Sophie instead of her in every life. I knew how close Sophie and Justin were as friends. Now I understood that she was trying to save him, instead of kill herself with him. She was hurt badly, but Justin had only had seconds left. He had whispered something and closed his eyes, so close to death. Then she had screamed, a sound that shook me to my core. It was all I could do not to run to her. I had had to work the spells to preserve her life while staying hidden in the crowd. And then I had seen the Witch of the Waste, watching as well, but with a look of rage on her face that stood out in the shocked and frantic crowd.

I was doing my best to put it all together and made some lame attempts at some lame theories.

One: Justin had killed himself because Sophie didn't love him back. Somewhat logical but a bit extreme, and it didn't explain the Witch's role in it all.

Two: Justin was a depressed child who one day couldn't take it anymore. A depressing thought, but also highly unlikely if what I'd seen of him through Sophie's thoughts was true.

Three: The Witch had possessed Justin with magic and made him kill himself just to torture Sophie. Now _that_ was Witch-of-the-Waste-level cruelty. Also a rather grim prospect, but it was the closest I'd come so far to something she could do to get inside Sophie's life and cause her pain—

Suddenly something clicked for me and I knew that the thing that struck me was the beginning, a fragment, of the truth.

The Witch had been taunting me for weeks through scorch-mark messages that she knew I could read all too easily. _I have an advantage. I have someone on the inside, to put the beginning of my doings into motion. _Someone on the inside, to get close to her only to cause her pain_._ But the day Justin killed himself, the Witch had looked…angry, almost. A little off-balance, like she had been knowing everything that was to come and had suddenly been blindfolded and had the rug yanked from under her.

Oh, crap. _Here's another guess_, I thought grimly.

Four: Justin had been working for the Witch.

It made perfect, horrible sense. I had looked at some of Sophie's memories before and had been watching her for a while back in her world, so I could see the relationship between her and Justin. And it was good—full of laughter, of hope, of the discovery of a friend who you could automatically connect with. Apparently he'd felt that way, too.

* * *

"Really, it's fine. I can talk about it. It's not like I haven't before," Sophie took another, less shaky breath as I watched her carefully. She looked so frail and delicate, so easily breakable, despite the quietly strong young woman she had become. I had wrapped her in a blanket when she started shivering walking slowly down the stairs a minute ago, and she held it around her as she sat by Calcifer.

"You don't need to run through it all," I said hastily. "I, uh, saw your dream."

"Magic?"

I nodded. "But there's a bit that you don't know."

She cocked her head to the side, looking a little more stable, both physically and emotionally. "What don't I know by now? I mean," she suddenly gave me a shrewd look, "What _else_ don't I know."

I squirmed uncomfortably. I had kept from her what I needed to at the time. What a great way to earn her trust. Then again, she never had trusted me. Ever. "Well, I was, um… I was there. I saw everything in person. I've been watching you for just over a year, not a couple days. But I wasn't the only one--!"

"Over a _year?!_" she nearly yelled, her pupils shrinking in her unusual gray eyes. Ah. It looked like she was more recovered, thank goodness. However, that didn't mean I had to like her outbursts at me that took place all too often.

"I was only protecting you—"

"What, and you come out and say this _now?!_"

"You're lucky that nothing—"

"—happened?! Something sure as hell _did_ happen, Howl!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that wasn't what I—!"

"How am I supposed to trust you? I'm not surprised I've never given in to you before! Enough with the secrets and tell me something straight!"

"What I'm trying to say is—"

"—And I swear, if you were even _thinking _about—"

"_I kept you alive!_" I practically had to shout over her. She screeched to a halt and stared at me, taken aback. I took advantage of her silence. "Didn't it ever occur to you that no one, witch or not, could ever survive that fall, let alone get off with a broken arm at the worst? I was standing there putting magic on you so you wouldn't die yet unable to show myself. Do you know how hard it was for me to continue to hide from you?"

Her face took on a look of vague recognition as I kept talking. "The Witch of the Waste was there, too, you know. You're lucky that she was distracted as she was, else she might have come after me and you'd be in much worse condition, believe me."

"You…why didn't she kill me?" Sophie asked, her lips barely moving.

"That would have been too easy," I said tightly. "She goes for the drama."

She woke up a little. "What, that wasn't dramatic enough, flinging myself off a building?"

I sighed. "You did that yourself. It wouldn't have been as good as the alternative." Not like I was going to tell her what the alternative always ended up being before. I'd let her think the obvious.

"Oh…_oh_…" the color drained from her face.

"I'm so sorry and I wish I didn't have to tell you this, but there's something else you need to know about that day." I could almost feel remorse stirring within me, minus my heart. Speaking of which, how could she ever return it to me? She knew so much so soon, how could I know that she wouldn't even bother to try out of revulsion for me? The idea of Sophie truly, deeply hating me so sent a stronger shockwave through my core. I didn't want her to hate me, especially not after I told her about Justin. "Look, all I know is that Justin was your best friend. I don't want to say this but…" I licked my dry lips. "Part of the reason the Witch was there, the reason Justin did what he did… It was because he was working for the Witch." Her eyes went all unfocused all of a sudden and she looked ready to pass out again, but not before she shot me. "Calm down, though, let me finish. Give me a second." I steadied her and held up a thin finger. I had just had an epiphany and took a moment to think.

Something hadn't seemed right when I realized her friend was all buddy-buddy with the Witch. I could tell an awful lot about Justin from my various means, and there were two things that stood out to me. One was how caring of a person he was. The other was how conflicted he was, deep down inside himself. Considering these developments… _The plot thickens_, I thought sarcastically. _So that was why he did it._ After defying the Witch in what seemed like the most extreme way possible and giving her a good shock, he got blindsighted himself. I would bet anything (even my beautiful hair) that he hadn't expected Sophie to follow him. How like her—to be so unpredictable and out of character at the most dramatic times.

Justin had never actually died. My eyes weren't fooling me in the Witch's hall, and neither were Sophie's.

Alright, well, I had to tell Sophie sometime, and besides, technically it was good news. "She somehow tricked him into her service and she wanted him to get close to you, to spy on you," the words came tumbling out in a rush now, "but, I don't think he ever truly wanted to be in league with her because if he was as good as I can tell he was from your memories, then I'm almost positive that he was trying to kill himself in an effort to save you from himself."

I looked from the floor back up to her tentatively. A single tear welled in the corner of her eye and spilled over onto her cheekbone. Before it could trace its path any farther down her face I reached for her carefully and brushed it away with my finger, surprising even myself. She swayed slightly and I gathered her into my arms protectively. However, she wasn't shuddering with tears now.

"Oh, Justin. Of course," she whispered, her arms coming up to hold me seemingly subconsciously. "I knew he was good, deep down. I could never believe otherwise."

Was that the slightest twinge of jealousy I felt? Justin had no doubt loved her too; any guy would be crazy not too. I was envious of the time they had gotten to spend together, how close they'd become. And then came a flicker of resentment. Why couldn't she think of _me_ that way, speak of me that way? Oh, right. Because I was an untrustworthy idiot of a wizard who'd done nothing but bring tragedy and confusion into her life since day one. And I really did mean day one. So many years had passed but it always ended up the same. Not this time. No, this time I was going to break the cycle. I wouldn't kill her like I had before.

* * *

"Not this time," Howl muttered, almost feverishly.

"What did you say?" Sophie had barely heard the words but was immediately and without warning sent spiraling into semiconsciousness as his words struck a chord deep within her. Not again… She didn't know how much more of this she could take in a day… The thought flitted through the back of her mind before she was immersed in the past.

_She had been sitting outside her tent, dutifully stoking the fire when a commotion from just outside the village's magical boundaries startled her. What startled her more were the two figures that broke through the intangible barrier as though it had never existed. It looked, she peered through the dusky light, it looked like a woman chasing after a man. How strange. They both had magic; she could simply sense it._

"_You won't get away from me! Not this time!"_ _the woman was screeching after the dark-haired man. She had wildly curly, red hair that looked like a flaming halo in the fading light, and she might have been very beautiful if she hadn't been acting like a demon._

_Sophie suddenly gasped. Except no one called her Sophie. Her nickname in her village was Little Mouse, a name that everyone said fit the quiet brunette perfectly. Her shock had come from her thoughts: maybe the woman was a demon! The poor man. Magic or not, he wasn't doing too well, so she stood, abandoning the fire, and jogging toward the sprinting pair, she let loose a spell that caused the equivalent of an invisible brick wall to come up in front of the demon-woman. The enraged woman slammed to a halt as the man looked relieved but continued running toward Sophie. Now that he was closer, she could see that he was rather handsome, even in his panicked state._

"_No! Not this time! Get back here! You're not escaping me!" the woman was apparently back on her feet and even more irate than before._

_The last clear thing Sophie saw was the man casting a particularly potent spell that drove the woman away from the village. Then he looked at her with something unfamiliar to her in his abnormally bright blue eyes._

_For the next minute—or it might have been hours—Sophie caught glimpses of her first life. She looked eerily similar to how she did now, only with distinctly indigenous American features. She was oh-so-shy and it was betrayed in her large gray eyes. They were her most unusual quality, unheard of in a region full of dark-haired, dark-eyed people._

_And the handsome man from that day was constantly and without reason, it seemed to her, trying to win her heart. She had never realized how literal that was until one night, when she had grudgingly agreed to meet him by the riverbank._

_Through her limited tidbits of memory Sophie caught, she saw that she had stood by the river, reveling in the clear light of the moon and the many stars. She had heard a noise and turned to see the man, who called himself Howell, emerge from a grove of trees. He had his usual confident smile on, although there was something colder lying beneath it that she didn't quite understand. The memories broke up like a fading radio signal and the last thing Sophie could make out was a girl's dying body—her body—lying on the bank of the river, a pool of her crimson blood mingling with the running water. Howell had torn her heart out._

Sophie slept through the night and well into the next day, tossing and turning the entire time. Howl stayed by her, both when he was awake and when he slept. She awoke just after noon and her gray eyes immediately met sapphire blue ones. The resemblance from her memory, from her death, was terrifying and she screamed before quickly clapping a hand over her own mouth.

"Sophie? Are you alright? Please answer me," Howl's voice penetrated through her wall of shocked silence.

"No…no…_no_…" her agitated murmurs increased slightly in volume. Her pupils had shrunk to mere pinpoints in utter fear, like those of a trapped animal. "You—you—you monster! Get away from me!" she finally found her voice, yelling at him.

Howl reeled back as though she had shot him. "…What did you see? Sophie, please tell me! I…I never…I don't remember," he finished weakly, guessing at the general nature of what she had dreamed about. But he wasn't sure what had brought the surge of memory back to her.

"The river…at the river…my _heart_—my heart!" her breath was coming faster and she clutched a hand to her chest to feel her heart beating erratically within her. She closed her eyes and sighed in relief.

Howl felt sick. "The first time…" That had begun the curse of Howl's heart being taken in every life. It was how he paid for what he had done to Sophie. And the worst past was, try as he might, even under the influence of magic, he remembered none of Sophie's death.

Half an hour later, both Sophie and Howl had calmed down and come to terms with each other. Calcifer had decided to be a helpful demon for once and had talked some sense into them both, especially considering that Sophie looked both fearful of and furious with Howl, and the vain wizard himself was looking vaguely self-hating. That was a frightening enough development on its own.

"Well, considering it's Sunday afternoon, I supposed we only have one option," Howl ran a hand through his hair wearily.

Sophie muttered something under her breath, which Howl deliberately ignored. "You need to be home and I'm coming with you."

Her head snapped up. "_Whaaat?_ Howl, that's a horrible idea, do you have any idea what could go wrong—"

"Horrible is my middle name. Listen to logic, Sophie." Saying her name still sent little shivers through him. "Your aura is by now entirely of magic and sadly that makes you just that much easier to find. You've experienced firsthand how powerful the Witch of the Waste is. I have to protect you. And," he spoke over her when she opened her mouth angrily, "I'll stay visible to your eyes only. I have to always be with you."

Sophie considered this and sighed resignedly. It did in fact look like their only choice. "All I have to say is, I'm looking forward to watching you suffer through high school," she snickered after the thought of an utterly confused Howl sitting in her pre-calc class crossed her mind.

**A/N: A funny prospect, yes? Anyway. Personally I liked my idea of the heart-torn-out thing (don't worry—I assure you I stay away from exceptionally gory details 95% of the time) but maybe that's just me :) So the next chapter, I'm still editing it. Funny/good stuff happens!!**


	7. Chapter 7

**February Breath**

**Disclaimer: Well now, this is just getting tiresome. Would I, the queen of laziness, be writing one of these if I owned anything other than my minor OC's and plot?**

A/N: As promised, the content matter is getting happier and less despair-slash-heartbreak-slash-pain and all that :D This was soooo much fun to write; there are parts in this chapter I've wanted to get to for a looong long time. This is one of those chapters where you may find yourself going "Finally!" I shall say no more—read on! (Also something might be off with the format, namely the spacing…ignore me if I'm being stupid, still ignore it if it looks weird.)

I almost forgot—I confess, I'm finally reading the book for the second time in three days! (Not all that amazing once you consider it, but with my schedule it's a miracle.) It's so good! Diana Wynne Jones is a genius. I really want to read the other related books too. Anyway! I'm not nearly as much of a genius but this is my story :)

**Chapter 7**

"Yeah, so, this is my room." The two had, mercifully and with much commentary from Calcifer prior to their leaving, arrived at Sophie's house right on schedule and without a snag. She was back in her regular clothes, the dress and some other things safely packed in an exact replica of her backpack that Howl had taught her how to conjure. Her parents had completely swallowed her story and Sophie had phoned her best friend just to be sure everything was alright with her. She couldn't thank her enough. She had wanted to tell her everything, but then Howl had pointed out that the Witch could easily figure out that she knew and go after her. Sophie's mouth shut like a steel trap after that and she made up the excuse of just getting away from home for a little while, going to the next town over and staying in a small inn for the night.

She was so tired from staying up late with Maria, she told her family, that she was going to bed right after dinner. Besides, she wanted Howl the womanizer away from her innocent (and prettier) sisters. The one helpful thing he'd done so far was put up a sound barrier around Sophie's bedroom so they couldn't be heard talking with each other. That wouldn't be pretty. "_Sophie, are you hiding a boy under your bed?_" "_No Mom, don't worry, he's just a temporarily invisible but gorgeous wizard, so no worries!_"

Sophie's room was pretty much the attic of the house, but well-insulated as well as with a window facing the south. It was her choice to live on the third floor, she said. Being high up combined with the peace she got was good for her. The walls were painted a deep blue, not sky-colored, not navy, just a straight-up blue that was still vibrant in its own way. _Kind of like Sophie_, Howl thought. Her bed, heaped with quilts, was against the right wall, extending toward the middle of the room. A cluttered desk sat in the back left of the room with piles upon piles of file folders stacked everywhere. A wooden chest and a chair were beneath the window and a colorful braided rug took up the center of the floor. The entire right wall was covered with every kind of drawing or painting one could dream up, from rough sketches and smoky charcoals to detailed still-lifes and delicate watercolors, complete with an easel folded and propped against a small section of bare wall. In the back right corner was a stereo on a stand littered with all kinds of little technological contraptions, some familiar and some unfamiliar to Howl. (He wasn't surprised he didn't recognize some of the newer inventions; he hadn't been back in Wales, in this world, to visit Megan and her family in a while. It was a little disorienting.) Draped over the beams of the high, peaked ceiling were strings of little paper lanterns with lights inside. Then gave the room a bluish glow, highlighting the loose color scheme. A door on the left wall led to a bathroom painted green. But the most un-Sophie-like thing in the room was a floor-length, two-paneled mirror also on the left wall.

Howl turned to Sophie triumphantly. "Ha. See? You have a decent-sized mirror, too."

She flushed. "Yeah, well, it's for my dance and practical things like that, not parading around like an overgrown peacock like some men I could mention."

"Ooh. Harsh." Howl was quite unperturbed; in fact, a small smile curved his lips up on one side. Sophie just shook her head and rolled her eyes, walking across the room to grab the sweats and tank top she slept in before marching to the bathroom.

She was about to slam the door for effect when she had a thought. She poked her head back out and narrowed her eyes menacingly at the wizard, who was standing in the middle of the floor with his hands in his pockets. "If you or your magic comes so much as ten feet from this door…" she threatened.

He held up his hands in a surrendering pose. Satisfied but still on her guard, Sophie spent the next half hour in the bathroom, emerging in her sleepclothes and toweling her wet hair. Even then, she left a trail of drips across the floor. At first, she couldn't see Howl and she had a second of panic before spotting him leaning lazily against the far wall, his arms folded over his chest.

"See, if I was the same as you, I would have taken four times that long in there," she teased him, in good humor now from his appropriate behavior.

"'S not fair," he grumbled childishly.

"How exactly are you planning on sleeping? I'm thinking that conjuring an extra bed, invisible or not, might pose some problems when someone walks in and slams into thin air."

He got a predictably mischievous glint in his cerulean eyes and grinned wickedly. "Who needs an extra bed?"

As she walked by him, Sophie whapped him over the head with her towel. "Not cool at all!"

"Although you _did_ say that you sleep like a rock; maybe you wouldn't even notice if—" he kept taunting her, moving slightly closer.

"You keep your hands to yourself or I'll chop them off. And I don't mean your hands."

At this Howl winced painfully. "Alright, alright, jeez." He folded himself into the chair by the window gracefully, his lithe body reminding Sophie of a large, lazy cat. As Sophie climbed into bed under her multitude of covers that protected her from the winter chills in the air of the northeastern US, she truly started to appreciate how tired she really was. She wouldn't be surprised if she woke up and didn't recognize her own room, she was so delirious, she thought amusedly. It was only seconds before she was asleep.

* * *

In the middle of the night, Sophie awakened so silently and quickly that she hardly noticed that she was conscious. What could possibly have woken her up? Then, her eyes roving around, she caught a glance of her _open_ window over one of her quilts and a man's shape clearly outlined in front of it. This so wasn't happening. A burglar? Just her luck. She was terrified. What if he had a gun or something? She nearly thought to scream, but realized it wouldn't do her any good, and she came close to hyperventilating. The man crossed the floor, not too fast, not too slow, but not towards Sophie either. He barely made a noise.

_Ohhhh my gosh, someone's breaking into my house and he's RIGHT THERE and what are you going to do Sophie, what can you do, think, breathe evenly, don't move, what can you do…_ Then her train of thoughts was cut off as she realized he was moving in a straight, unhesitating line for the steps that led down to the second floor. To the rest of her house. To her parents. To Martha and Lettie. _NO!_

And what she did was a little bit like when she had thrown herself off that building. She didn't realize that she had so much as made a decision to move when she threw the covers off and sprang off the edge of the bed in one motion, throwing herself at the intruder's back just as he heard her move. Her only vaguely coherent thought was, _Not my sisters, you bastard!!_

The force knocked him to the ground, hopefully also knocking the wind out of him, and again she moved out of instinct, sitting on his back and keeping him pinned to the floor while snapping her arm around his neck in a chokehold. "Going somewhere?" she growled. Quiet Sophie, being quietly independent and strong all on her own with no one else realizing it.

The man was, she assumed, shocked into silence for a second before tremors began to shake him. He was laughing! As a general statement, that was never good. She tensed, unsure of what he might do, and then he spoke.

"Calm down, Sophie, it's only me," said a deep voice like silk around her restricting arm. Only one person in the world had that voice and would have the first thing to come out of his mouth be "calm down" when speaking to her.

Her arms loosened slightly as logic came flooding back into her senses. He just opened the window for some air… And he probably just wanted to walk around… Oh. _Oh._

Howl flipped over on the floor and after a second she quickly got off him, very conscious of the fact that she had been straddling him. He sat up and coughed slightly. How did a pretty little thing like her get to be so strong, he wondered, and he voiced his curiosity.

Sophie blushed slightly at this. "It's a gift," she shrugged, offering a hand to help him up. He took it, but was obviously still very much himself because instead of pulling himself up, he pulled her down beside him. She inhaled sharply as he knelt in such close proximity to her. "Sorry about that. I didn't mean to—well, I—" she made an attempt to cover her now doubled embarrassment, looking anywhere but his eyes that were just as intense in the near-dark. When that failed she stood up quickly. Howl then did the same.

"You didn't have to tackle me, you know," he grumbled, his brief chance lost.

"You didn't have to start sneaking around in the middle of the night!" she forgot her discomfort and her temper flared slightly. "What were you doing, anyway?"

"That's my business." He was also getting more irritated by the second.

"For god's sake, Howl, you're in my house!"

"I don't deem it necessary to tell you absolutely everything."

"Clearly not. You've demonstrated that much already." Sophie planted her hands on her hips.

"I thought you slept like a rock anyhow, what happened to that?" He slithered out of the accusation.

"Something was obviously wrong with my surroundings, because you were standing there looking like a freaking burglar; that's why I woke up." She gestured toward the window and took a menacing half step toward him.

"What, so now I can't so much as _breathe_ without giving you a heart attack? I'm that scary?" The several inches in height he had over her were particularly obvious now that he was in her face, snapping at her.

She angled her head farther up defiantly, partially to see him better. "You wish. You don't scare me."

For a moment they stood there glaring daggers at each other, sapphire meeting stormcloud gray. Then Howl had a spontaneous stroke of inspiration, and before Sophie could react in the slightest, he had caught her chin in one hand and looped his other arm around her waist. He tilted her face up and pressed his lips to hers.

Her eyes widened in utter shock. She tried to push away and protest at the same time, but Howl's lips moving expertly over hers effectively silenced her as he pulled her closer. Sophie had only ever kissed a boy a few times, and each time was only something like that of a fleeting peck during a game of truth-or-dare. This was nothing like that. And as much as she tried to hold the feeling down…she _liked_ it. She almost forgot to breathe for a minute, and then realized she was simply dizzy with enjoyment.

Howl pulled back slightly, disengaging himself for a second, teasing her, before he swooped in again. Sophie's mind began to object to what was happening, but she shoved the disapproval away, even if she did balk a little at the fact that it was Howl who was kissing her.

Her hands were currently resting on his chest, her arms pinioned due to Howl's tight embrace. His fingertips grazed lightly along her jawline to gently brush her free-flowing hair away from her neck, sending shivers up and down her spine. She slid her hands up over his shoulders to put her arms around his neck and began to kiss him back. When he responded by tilting his head to kiss her more deeply she let out an involuntary sigh and twisted her hands in his flaxen hair that was shining silver in the moonlight coming in the window.

Sophie felt so content in his arms it almost frightened her. He was familiar just by being himself: the way he smelled of hyacinth and something else she couldn't place, his mannerisms, his kisses. And oh, how she loved it. Did she love…him? He, himself? She didn't know. The idea both thrilled her and scared her out of her wits. But how could he have ever killed her, if what he was showing now was any indication?

And it hit her. This was exactly what he had done before. The first time, and the last, he had chased after her incessantly and she had refused him. The first time, it was he who killed her. The last, too, when she considered it, if only indirectly. Maybe, she thought, just maybe, if I do allow him to pursue me…I won't die. Great. What a fantastic thought.

Howl felt her losing enthusiasm and reluctantly pulled out of the kiss. "Is something wrong?" he asked, now a little worried. What could be wrong?

"I…well…I'm scared, Howl!" she blurted out. When he blinked confusedly she clarified. "Not of this! I mean…I'm scared of the Witch, and everything to do with her, and not living to be eighteen, and—"

"Hush." He placed a finger over her quivering lips. "It's all right for now. You're safe, cariad." He hugged her to him, resting his head on hers as she buried her face in his chest. "I'm with you."

He hadn't even noticed what he'd called her until a few seconds after he said it. _Cariad._ He used to call her that, all the time. He waited for a minute, cherishing the time he had to hold her. He knew all too well that it wouldn't last. "But right now you need your sleep. Come on. Let's get you to bed." He guided her gently back across the room and she was asleep as soon as she was back how she had been laying before. A small smile made her lips curve up and she looked so peaceful in her beauty that it would have hurt Howl's heart if he had one. As it was, the amount protectiveness he felt made it hard to believe that he didn't. Although he knew that the real feeling should be a thousand times more intense. Calcifer should be getting that feeling right now, seeing as how he was the one in possession of Howl's heart, he thought, grimacing. At times it was so annoying to have a demon be able to feel all the emotions that he should be feeling instead. He invisibly extended and modified the chair he had slumped down in with his magic, and quite comfortable, he fell into a light sleep as well.

* * *

I awoke at 7:08 the next morning to the sight of a pair of blue eyes mere inches from mine and a beautiful voice hissing, "Sophie! Wake up, goddammit, wake up already!" My eyes opened a little more as I covered a yawn. "Chill out, chill out, it's all good—" Suddenly I remembered the events of last night and I knew there was no stopping the blush that colored my cheeks. Howl knew what I was thinking about and he gave me a dazzling, sly smile. Glancing at the clock brought me back to my senses and I yelped.

"Eight minutes late!? Crap, crap, crap…" I muttered, jumping out of bed feeling surprisingly awake and well-rested. Way too rested. I should have been exhausted. So, naturally, my first instinct was to glare at the resident wizard suspiciously.

He laughed out loud. "All right, I confess. You didn't exactly have a peaceful night so I thought I'd be doing you a favor."

I huffed. I couldn't wait until I could properly harness my powers, I thought glumly.

"What about the blue one?" Howl suddenly suggested. I blinked. I had been rifling through my drawers to find a t-shirt to wear. The one he was talking about I hadn't worn in weeks. It was a really pretty color that was similar to the color of my walls, with a V-neck shallow enough to be modest, and was slightly tighter than some of my other shirts. What the heck, I might as well listen to the wizard. The wizard who was a really good kisser… My thoughts drifted briefly before I grabbed my favorite pair of jeans and headed for the bathroom. I was out and ready to go in ten minutes, to which Howl stared at me in disbelief.

"No makeup? Nothing else? How'd you do that?" he demanded.

"No, never. My only issue is my hair." I waved a hand at the strict high braid that I had twisted my long tresses into.

"Yet you're still so beautiful." I barely caught the words he said under his breath. "Why don't you just…let it go?" He cocked his head to one side slightly.

I chose to overlook the (false) comment that I pretended not to hear. "I…I don't know. I always keep it like this."

"Ever try something new?"

I got the feeling that he was referring to more than my hair. "Hm," I considered. "Maybe it _is _time for a change," I murmured. "Enough seems to be turning on its head around here anyhow."

* * *

"Someone slept in—" Martha began to tease me as I bounded down a third flight of stairs into the first-floor kitchen. Then she stopped to gape at me.

"Er, Sophie? Your hair?" Lettie just looked confused. I never would have left my hair down like this, let alone actually forget to put it up without even noticing.

"No, that's intentional." I casually rummaged in a drawer for a granola bar. "I just felt like it was time for a change, you know?"

"All right…" Martha said slowly.

Next to me, a Howl visible only to my eyes smiled. _See? _He seemed to say.

A/N: Finally, yes? Haha, I was trying to come up with a way for it to happen as they were snapping at each other and then had this hilarious idea of Sophie not remembering that he was in her room and freaking out… Personally, my favorite line was "You keep your hands to yourself of I'll chop them off. And I don't mean your hands." I got that line from my friend at a Superbowl party, lol. Well some more funny stuff happens later, I shall keep updating if you want me to! Reviews greatly appreciated :)


	8. Chapter 8

**February Breath**

**Disclaimer: The queen of laziness strikes again…owning nothing, nothing, nothing, except my OC's and plot.**

**A/N: Well, now that I'm officially addicted to the book (!!) I had to make some minor, really subtle references to Diana Wynne Jones' story. There's some pretty funny Howl-Sophie stuff going on here—just wait til almost the end of the chapter… Hilarious to write, I don't know how good to read so review please! :)**

Chapter 8

School was nothing short of a blur of hilarity, some very quick saves of potentially awkward situations, and fair near-disasters.

The first challenge came in the form of Sophie herself and her appearance. She got more than one badly concealed stare even before classes started.

Howl nearly gave her a heart attack in her first period class when she thought she was going crazy hearing voices that no one else did. Actually, one voice in particular. Howl had to calm her down, inside her head, while sitting right next to her, invisible to the rest of the world. That was a bit of a blunt way to demonstrate that they could communicate nonverbally, didn't he think so? Sophie would have glared at him for effect but would have looked like she was becoming ticked off at thin air.

"_See? I told you you look fantastic,_" he told her smugly when she asked him about the looks she had gotten. "_Anyone naturally notices you for your beauty anyway; you just choose to ignore the looks and stay quiet so that you blend in. You shouldn't try to hide who you are,_" he pointed out. Her only response was a few mental huffs and some mental face-making, which was harder to do than it sounded.

A few times, Sophie's friends caught her spacing out and accused her of being in love, the reason for her distraction. She was visited by the urge to beat Howl about the head when he smirked knowingly, and vowed to get back at him later. (Besides, it wasn't like it was true! Who did he think he was, knowing everything?) Then she had had to make up some lame-sounding but completely believable excuses for her absentmindedness. She most certainly was _not_ in love with Howl! Later as the girls were discussing guys, she made some harmless-sounding comments about guys in general that she knew needled Howl to no extent. It was her turn to smirk.

Another issue presented itself in the fact that Sophie's gigantic 2,000-student high school's hallways were unbelievably packed in between periods, posing a problem for Howl's navigation from one place to another. He had ended up having to put a spell on himself to make himself literally ghostlike—anyone and anything could pass right through him with no idea except for a hint of an air current that carried the smell of hyacinth. This creeped Sophie out hugely but the wizard didn't seem to mind it.

As she had predicted, the increasingly bewildered look on Howl's face as she whizzed through math class was priceless. "_Sophie? Is he speaking English?_" he asked more than once about the teacher. He gave up on making sad attempts to actually get something out of it and took to walking around, asking Sophie questions in her mind about people he noticed and about some modern technology. It was hell trying to explain cell phones to him.

Later, in the cafeteria, Sophie noticed Howl, ah, observing, shall we say, some of her friends. He was practically drooling over Clara, a Russian girl with skin like porcelain that contrasted strikingly with her near-black curls, and was taking an interest in Maria as well. She sent a few threatening thoughts his way, but they seemed to have zero effect whatsoever. Frustrated, she racked her brains with how to hit him with something without a) having an object bounce off thin air, and b) not looking like a complete and total mental case doing it. She finally succeeded. As she got up to throw a wrapper away, she deliberately set off in Howl's direction, who was conveniently standing next to their table as well as in the opposite direction of where the trash was. Luckily, her prediction of her friends' reactions turned out to be correct.

Liza laughed suddenly, breaking off her previous sentence. "Wrong way, Soph! Turn around."

Sophie had a reputation among her friends of being extremely klutzy and occasionally a little prone to missing the obvious and overanalyzing things. They teased her that her clumsiness factor had a multiple personality disorder, because they had all seen how graceful and sure of herself she became when she danced—the total opposite of her usual demeanor.

Now she stopped, right behind a still-oblivious Howl as planned, and spun around 180 degrees. On the way she bent and raised one arm slightly, laughing at her own silliness. With it she gave Howl a good whack on his lower back, along with the equivalent of a bucket of cold water on his head through a mental signal. He hacked and lurched forward, making quite the indignant-and-in-pain face. Thankfully the noise was covered by Sophie's bell-chime laugh. She walked by the table in the other direction, grinning and telling her friends to can it when they started mocking her playfully. Upon her return, she saw her giggling friends and behind them, a thoroughly pissed-off Howl. She projected the image of a sweet smile into his head, at which his own scowl deepened. "_You're _so_ going to catch it later_," he threatened.

"_I wouldn't worry,"_ she mused whilst sitting back down. "_I don't know about me, but you sure aren't catching anything. Or should I say any_one_?" _He just looked more offended and grumbled for the rest of the day, which consisted of two periods.

But the oddest thing that had happened all day—and that was saying something, with Howl around—was that everyone seemed to be taking to staring at Sophie as she passed them in the halls, and sending badly concealed glances her way in class. Before the cafeteria incident, she had consulted Howl on the matter. "_Why are they all looking at me! Am I just going insane?_"

"_I believe, my dear, that you are being noticed by people. Answer that question yourself, though. Try to notice what _they're _thinking._"

What? Oh. He meant read them with my magic. Um…okay, she didn't need to pay attention; the spacey teacher had put up the homework answers and was behind her desk shuffling papers. What did teachers do at times like these, anyway? So with that thought she attempted to probe into the mind of her Spanish teacher.

In a matter of seconds, just as she could feel her brain begin to strain itself, she was rewarded for her efforts.

_Test to correct, have to watch Kathy's dog for the weekend, ugh. What's Rob bringing home for dinner? He told me he'd go to the store after work today but I should call him just in case. It's like that time at his mother's house, always with the excuses! It's always this that or something else… _And she continued to rant silently about her husband's problems with procrastination.

A little lightheaded from the effort, Sophie breathed deeply, oxygenating her blood. "_So? How do you like that?_" Howl's excited thought drifted into her head.

In her mind, she simply beamed. She wanted to try again! It crossed her mind that she was crossing personal barriers, and promised herself that she would only scratch the surface of someone's consciousness. Infiltrating the thoughts of a boy near her named Ryan whose eyes were roving over the room, occasionally flicking towards her, was easier due to the fact that it was her second time doing it.

"…_the same person? How weird. It's like she just kinda let go. Don't think I even realized she was in this class. Does she try to blend in? Stand out in a crowd easily if she wanted but usually wicked quiet. Really pretty…_"

There was no other way to describe it other than Sophie was shocked out of Ryan's mind. Pretty? She delved back in, deeper this time, and discerned that he really was thinking about her.

"_See? Now do you believe me?_" Howl asked softly.

"…_Maybe. This is much a weird feeling, getting into other people's thoughts. I feel like I'm intruding._"

"_Then only focus on the thoughts they're having at the moment. You don't have to, like, mind-stalk them._"

She almost giggled out loud. "_Is that even possible?_"

"_Anything's possible. Not even the sky's the limit, in our, ah, line of work._" After a few seconds of pensive silence, he gave her a suggestion. "_Try manipulating your hearing to get selective noises that are too far away to hear normally. Like…those girls over there. The two brunettes and the really hot—_"

"_Alright, I'll do it if you stop ogling everything in a skirt. Figuratively,_" she amended.

At this he promptly shut up and sighed, leaning against the front wall. "_You're so difficult. Can't I have any fun?_"

"_Of course, just keep it to your own mind and don't feel any compulsion to mysteriously disappear from my view and go walking around visible. You could easily pick up a million girls an hour just in that way and we certainly don't want that._"

He wrinkled his nose, trying to find a loophole, before noticing the left-handed compliment she had (probably subconsciously) given him. Wisely, though, he chose not to say anything about it. "_Just listen to the conversation already._"

Sophie sighed and worked her magic again, trying to block out other noise and imagine she could hear the three girls whispering, at the same time trying to read their lips.

"…new here?"

"No, silly, that's Sophie Hatter, she's lived here for years."

"Wait—_Hatter_? As in Martha and Lettie's older sister?"

"The one and only."

Sophie refrained from making a face. Of course, she was known as the quiet big sister of the ever-popular cheerleader, Lettie, and Martha the spunky little brainiac. The girls kept talking, though. One of them looked a little, well, troubled.

"What do you think's with the change all of a sudden?"

"Beats me. Just coming out of her shell, maybe? Growing up and all that?"

"Hey, what color are her eyes?" The ditzy fake-blonde had just glanced over at Sophie, whose eyes were roving over the front of the room absently.

"I dunno, brown probably?"

At this Sophie deliberately tossed her hair over the shoulder closer to them and shifted in their direction slightly, maintaining the faraway look in said eyes. It was funny, but now she felt like she _wanted _people to know things about her, to notice her. She kept listening in.

"Oh, wow, are they blue?"

"I think they're gray."

"Are you sure it isn't just the fluorescent lights?"

"Dammit, now I hafta know! Look after class."

"Deal. She's actually really pretty, though, I don't know why she didn't use what she has before, I mean, she's even talking in class now. That was part of her problem, she never _said_ anything before. The only time I ever heard her talk was with her friends, I'm sure…"

There was that word again. _Pretty_. _"When are you going to accept that you're beautiful?"_ Sophie remembered Howl's words. Hmph. Whatever.

When she finally got home after some near-misses when Howl had distracted her by trying to convince her to let him drive, she remembered that she had a few hours to herself in the house. Lettie would be going straight from after-school cheerleading practice to work at the local bakery (which, rumor had it, had been getting a lot more young male customers now that Lettie had taken up a job there) and Martha was at some school club event or another. Neither of them would be home before six, and both Mom and Dad worked full-time, especially since Sophie would be going to college in the fall (she still didn't know where, and it scared her that the odds of her even living through the month were looking a little too slim for her liking.)

Of course, Howl's first request was that he take a bath upstairs. Sophie rolled her eyes and complied, a little in awe of his vanity. H would likely take five times as long as a normal human being and obsess over his hair afterwards. Well, she could hardly blame him. Maybe she would end up vain too, if she possessed that degree of beauty… She shook herself. _Come on, Sophie, don't be silly. You know you can't trust him anyhow._

Just over an hour later, she was in her room changing out of her school clothes when a yell came from the bathroom. Her eyes grew wide and she half stabilized herself to throw some kind of spell at whatever might come through the door, and a little ADD part of her wondered what could make Howl freak like that. She didn't think she'd ever heard him cry out. Well, okay, maybe _some_time, considering the implications of the word "ever" for them. Whatever made him do it was most likely not good, and she gritted her teeth for half a second before the door banged open.

It was Howl who came flying out. "_Sophie! _You—you sabotaged me!" What the hell? He came running at her, getting in her face. "Look! Look what happened to my hair!!" Wow. 'Look' was right. Howl was now a flaming ginger. Something in the water, maybe? That was a bit of a long shot. Huh. How weird.

"Erm…what a pretty color," Sophie didn't quite know what to make of this, especially considering all he was wearing was a pair of black jeans he had conjured up. She forced herself not to look at his lean, muscular upper body (although later she denied she'd ever do such a thing.)

"It's hideous!!" Okay, so the picture of a distressed Howl with messed-up, bright orange hair was pretty funny.

She bit back a giggle. "Um…something in the water maybe? Don't blame me."

"The water? Water here does this? How can I live like this?!" he groaned, looking more distraught and helpless by the second.

It was too much for Sophie by this point and she doubled over laughing, collapsing against her bed. Howl simply blinked, unable to grasp that she was laughing at him for a minute. "Heyyy!" he protested childishly, giving her a light whack on the shoulder. When his fingers met her skin, Sophie remembered through her haze of laughter that she had been halfway through changing and was now wearing her jeans and a sports bra.

Her mind abruptly switched gears. Howl noticed this warily, his own crisis temporarily pushed a little to the side. "Howl Pendragon, you get back in that bathroom this instant, you senseless idiot!"

"…Wha?"

"You will give me fair _warning_ before you come charging into my bedroom, and you be thankful it wasn't worse because I definitely get the feeling that if that had been the case there would now be a mysterious Howl-shaped hole in the wall by now and you, sir, would be nowhere to be seen!" She began pushing him back in the direction of the bathroom.

His issues drifted farther away from the forefront of his mind and he grinned impishly, really noticing her clothing or lack thereof for the first time. "And why would that be?" He spun away from her, backing up in another direction as she chased after him.

"God, you're so difficult."

"Didn't I recently tell you the same thing?" He sidestepped away around a chair.

"You're worse." Her hand grabbed at empty air.

"Is that so?"

As they bantered, Sophie noticed that Howl's hair, the cause of this whole scene, was rapidly turning purple instead of orange. Then the purple darkened and settled into black, the same ravenlike color it became when he had his wings. To change the topic, she informed him that his hair had now turned an even better color. In a panic, he tried to rush for the bathroom, but Sophie decided to torment him by standing in the way. She could deal with the clothing issue in a minute. "I thought you wanted me out!" he complained desperately.

"Oh, I just like being obnoxious."

His smile widened as he deliberately moved closer to her. "I can be obnoxious too, you know."

"No. You?" she said sarcastically, attempting to keep her heart rate down. Dammit, why did her heart always act so silly when she knew that in the end he'd try to kill her or something? He narrowed his eyes slyly and she felt something probing at her mind, like someone was scraping its surface. She threw up a wall to shield her thoughts, but not before he caught what she was seeing.

"Black? It's black again?" He made an exasperated noise.

"Peacock…" she muttered darkly.

"No fair with the name calling!" His dilemma resolved, sort of, he took notice of the fact that her face wasn't the only beautiful thing about her. There was something about her standing there glaring at him, hands on hips, with no proper shirt on that made him smile. So he did the natural thing that any man would do and he picked her up around the waist, pulling her to him to capture her mouth with his. Sadly, he only enjoyed a few seconds of his victory.

Sophie was stunned into immobility before her annoyance bubbled back to the surface again.

Something gave Howl's thoughts a slight twinge. Was it just him, or did Sophie have a fever or something? He reluctantly broke away to meet her fierce gray eyes practically shooting sparks. Frowning slightly, he set her back down gently and laid a cool hand on her forehead. He could feel the heat emanating from her from inches away—OW! He yanked his hand back too late, to realize that Sophie was actually glowing faintly orange. Although he wouldn't admit it, she was slightly terrifying. He had to back up a foot or two, grimacing, before the heat rapidly receded and Sophie smirked.

"Was that really necessary?" he grumbled, off the natural high he got from kissing Sophie.

"Hello. Witch," she said triumphantly.

"There's a reason it rhymes with something else," he continued to fume, stomping by into the bathroom to pull his white shirt on over his head. Jeez, she hadn't even known about magic for three days and already she was catching him off his guard. Too bad she was no longer defenseless. He sighed. Oh, well. Back to the same old song.

Sophie began to hum aimlessly, drifting about her room putting the clean laundry away. If she had been paying attention, she would have noticed the irony of the song that popped into her head. "You take the breath right out of me…"

Howl slowly took a half step out of the bathroom and watched her, his brow furrowing. He concentrated on the melody she was humming. "What song is that?" he asked.

"Hm? Oh. Uh," Sophie blinked and had to collect her thoughts to figure out what it had been. "Oh! "Breath." I doubt you know it."

"…Right…"

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"You're a terrible liar and you know it."

"I just thought I'd heard it before."

"Excuses…"

"Don't you have homework to be doing? What about that massive pre-calc assignment?"

"Slitherer-outer…"

"Because you know, if you don't keep up with your school work—"

"You also know I'll just keep bugging you until—"

"You'll fail miserably and end up wandering around New York City like a crazy person muttering to yourself for the rest of your days—"

"Curse your hair to turn a different color every five minutes and cut up all your clothes into tiny little triangles one by one to teach you—"

"All right, all right! Jeez. Pushy little thing, aren't you. Just listen to the lyrics. Think about the words." He suddenly sobered and his sea-colored gaze intensified, penetrating straight into Sophie like a flame burning a hole through ice.

She thought. _You take the breath right out of me…and left a hole where my heart should be._ Alright, so it's a heartbroken guy. Big deal. _You gotta fight just to make it through_. Ooh, shock. That was a phrase used commonly enough in music; it could have so many meanings. _Cause I will be the death of you._

Sophie

…Oh my. Of all the—great. Just great. So he was saying I stole his heart and he was going to kill me? What? Thinking about it, I remembered Calcifer making some offhanded comments about how heartless Howl was. Had he been trying to give me a hint?

He was going to kill me. Marvelous.

"So you're a heartless murderer," I said dryly, attempting to quell a thrill of what might have been fear in the pit of my stomach. It bore an eerie resemblance to my first death. (I still couldn't get over the weirdness of thinking that.)

Howl looked like he wanted to say something, but rephrased it. "I…didn't inte—" he suddenly blanched and looked like he was choking. Creepy song lyrics aside, I ran to his side where he was leaning against the doorframe, looking slightly pained.

"You didn't intend to…?" But he just shook his head mutely when I prompted him. "Oh. You can't talk about it?"

He took a rattling breath, coughing. "Not directly. Not in any kind of detail either. I can only make very vague, indirect statements."

I huffed. "Now that's not cool at all."

He chuckled and sounded more like himself again. "That's one way to put it. You try feeling like you're being strangled. I hate curses."

- - - Several hours later - - -

"Howl, I told you that you shouldn't—"

"Look a' tha' light! It's so pretty…it's like you, Sophie," the wizard slurred.

"Oh, jeez." Sophie was half carrying him up to her room. She had given in a little and let him come with her as she drove around town, his excuse being that he hadn't been in this world for a while and wanted to familiarize himself with modern society. He had a point in that if the Witch was going to attack, she needed him with her and he needed to "know the playing field" as he put it. That had involved dropping in on the one bar in the town where Sophie had stubbornly refused to join him and driven off to run an errand for her mother, returning later to find the wizard hardly able to stand on his own two feet. A girl of about twenty was eyeing him with interest as well and was slowly edging closer from the end of the bar: just another reason to get the dumb womanizer out of there. Oddly enough, the girl subtly backed down when Sophie showed up. She must have a witchy presence of something, because she certainly couldn't be seen as any kind of competition! Was what Sophie had stubbornly thought.

"Forget tipsy," she muttered. "You're downright drunk."

"Now, now, Sophie. Tha's quite the accusation. I 's only enjoying myself, you could've come, y' know…" He wagged a lazy finger at her.

"Yeah, and right now we'd be stuck in the car with half our bones broken, wrapped around the most convenient tree. No thanks." And with a final heave, she and Howl crashed to the floor at the top of her stairs. Again she was thankful for the silencing charm. Sophie rolled to stand up but found herself being yanked down by something. Howl had caught her ankle.

"Don't leave me, Sophie… Don' go 'way…" he got anxious in his drunken state.

"I'm right here, Howl, I'm just trying to make life easier for you."

He smiled sluggishly. "I love it when you say my name." His words took her a little off guard and she was thankfully spared from responding by Howl going on. "I think I love you, Sophie… Will you stay with me?"

She inhaled sharply. That was certainly unexpected. He said something like that so plainly! He must really be loosened up. She didn't know what her own specific feelings were on this subject—no! She _had no _feelings on this subject!—but no matter. He was drunk. "I'll stay here, Howl. But come on, we have to get you up."

After several minutes, Howl was safely asleep in his magicked chair and Sophie, equally exhausted although definitely not for the same reasons, took a brief shower and succumbed to unconsciousness soon after, Howl's last disturbing words echoing around in her head.

A/N: Awww don't you kinda love Howl's statements as he's drunk? Fluff yet not… Sophie's still in denial! Ahhh! I just had to include the hair thing. I was loling as I was writing it just picturing him tearing out of the bathroom…no matter how many times I see the movie, read the book, write about the same scene—I all but die laughing! Please review, et cetera, all that happy stuff. Any thoughts on what the Witch is up to? Where is she, and why hasn't she come after them yet? And what was Howl trying to say before the liplock curse kicked in? I hope you're enjoying the story :)


	9. Chapter 9

February Breath

Disclaimer: Nothing owned, borrowed, stolen, rented, microwaved.

**A/N: Finally, an update! I don't know about you but it seemed long to me. Sorry about that. You thought drunk Howl was bad; now he's got a hangover. (I keep rereading the scene in the book and die laughing every single time!) In which some secrets are almost revealed, some fluffiness ensues, and Sophie and Howl engage in some illegal activity. Enjoy! Comments are dwindling :( —keep reviewing please :)**

Chapter 9

"_Uhhhhnnn_…" Howl felt terrible. His head was throbbing, the light was far too bright, and he felt like he'd placed a supersensitive hearing spell on the whole world around him. Not to mention he felt slightly disconnected from his limbs.

"You, sir, are going to hell in a handbasket," he heard Sophie barely whisper, and he felt a cold, damp something across his eyes. It felt wonderful. Thank goodness she'd been sensitive enough to make as little noise as possible. Although she was a relatively quiet, soft creature anyway.

"Whyyou say tha'?" he groaned, nearly as slurred as he had been last night.

She just gave him a meaningful, knowing look and he remembered…sort of… "Unnngg. Di' I 'ave all m' clothes on?"

"What, is this a past issue?" She saw he was going to ignore that. "Yes you did, trust me, you wouldn't be here and fully, er," she looked at him again, "mostly intact, if you hadn't."

"Tha's good… 're you sure nothin', I dunno, weird, happ'ned?"

"All things considered, you got so hammered that it wasn't even funny, does that count?"

"Bu' the question is, did I get nailed?" he laughed weakly. Jeez, he bounced back fast, didn't he?

"You know, I'm not even going to dignify that with a response. But just to keep it clear: NO." She raised her voice ever so slightly and he winced in pain. "Hm." She looked vaguely sympathetic. "I suggest you go take a _very_ long, hot bath in total silence."

"Don' need t' tell me twice," he groaned, attempting to haul himself up. A wave of nausea hit him and he sat back down immediately.

"Hang on a sec, Howl. Have you no sense at all?" Sophie tsked, concentrating and trying a mild levitation spell on his limp form. "Hungover wizards are even more useless than sober ones," she muttered, putting normal precautions aside to drape one of his arms over her shoulders and guide his hovering body to the bathroom. She deposited him on a chair and made to leave. "I shudder to ask but will you be alright?" Despite his idiocy with no end in sight, he was causing her some worry.

"Uh-huhm," Howl said. Even in his hangover his old habits refused to die, but he had a bit of sense around Sophie. He wisely chose not to say that he wouldn't mind awfully if she stayed.

"Well, no one's hurrying you. Do as you please but stay hidden—I have to go to school." And she closed the door quietly. His welfare wasn't just in her interest because she was a little concerned about him—again, something she continued to deny—but because what if the Witch showed up on her doorstep and Howl was out of commission because of drinking too much? Forget idiocy with no end in sight—there would be no proverbial rhyme or reason to be so much as imagined for miles yet to come.

Sophie stalked up the steps into her room approximately seven hours later, muttering darkly about that day's mandatory sex ed class. "If I hear one more freaking word about fire in the fireplace…" She took pause for a second, remembering the other world she belonged to. "No offense to Calcifer, of course."

"Huh…?" Howl moaned drowsily. "It's in the fireplace…Calcifer…has…" he snored.

Sophie realized that he was asleep and dreaming. So far her noise hadn't woken him up and she'd always wanted to try something on a sleeping person. She decided to have a little fun. "What does Calcifer have, Howl? What does he have in the fireplace?" she asked softly.

"Have to get it back…"

"Get what back?" She was actually a little oddly curious now.

His incoherent mutterings trailed off into more snores.

"Howl…"

"So…phie?"

"Yes, Howl. I need you to tell me…what does Calcifer have?" she murmured soothingly.

"Mh…my…" he breathed for a moment. "Can't tell you."

"But why ever n—?" Was this something else that his curse didn't allow him to talk about? Maybe it was important. She reconsidered her question. "Can you give me a hint? A careful hint?"

"…Taken…every time…life…d—" and his words caught in his throat.

"Howl. Howl? Dammit." Sophie cursed her stupidity. She should have known. What if he stopped breathing? She at least should have waited til he was conscious! Why didn't she ever think these things through? She shook his shoulder and when that didn't work she considered slapping him, then amended that thought and started tapping him hard on the cheek. "Howl!"

He hacked violently as he woke up. He smacked himself on the chest with one hand, catching on a chain that was hanging from around his neck that Sophie hadn't noticed before. From the chain dangled a blue jewel that gleamed the same color as his crystalline eyes. The resemblance was so eerie that Sophie jumped a tiny bit as those eyes flew wide open. He shuddered and coughed a last time and sat there panting a little, closing his still slightly bloodshot eyes again.

"Apparently tongue-tying curses work in your sleep too," Sophie mused quietly, not sure how much volume the wizard's ears could still take.

Howl wheezed unhappily in agreement. Finding his voice, he croaked, "What'd I say? Or rather, try to say?" He was speaking at a normal volume, if a little rusty, which Sophie took for a good sign.

"I said something about Calcifer and didn't notice you were sleeping, then you said that Calcifer had something and I tried to ask you what. But you said you couldn't tell me so I asked for a hint, but all you said was "taken every time" and that wasn't very helpful. You started to say something else but that was when, you, ah, choked and nearly scared me to death." She narrowed her eyes at him like it was his fault.

"What, so it's my fault I got cursed?"

"Doesn't seem so far-fetched to me. Well, maybe it's not entirely your fault if it was the Witch of the Waste that did it. That old hag," she nearly snarled at the two memories she had of the Witch. Neither exactly left warm fuzzy feelings. "I don't blame you for running away from that woman. Although if memory serves me, you looking terrified was a pretty funny sight…" she giggled despite the circumstances it had been under.

"Ugh. _You _try that someday, tell me how you like it."

"I wouldn't just be running."

"Oh? And how might that be?"

"I'd either be turned around and at least attempting to blast said hag off the face of the earth—"

At this Howl made a rather ungentlemanly snort.

"—or I'd be running and screaming "Run fatty run!" back at her at the top of my lungs."

"She wasn't quite so enormous thousands of years ago, let me tell you."

"So damage her ego, if nothing else. Women obsess over their bodies fah too much." Sophie scoffed. Then her brow furrowed. Had she just said _far _in a British accent? How weird.

Howl had noticed it too and a little tingle of happiness shocked its way through him briefly. Her old accent had slipped through the cracks of memory and time. "You don't seem to," he responded to her comment.

"Cause I don't really cah and it's just another stupid, fanatical American ideah." Now she frowned. There it was again!

"You really do defy the stereotypes… How like you," Howl remarked.

"I'm nothing special, I just have my views. Everyone does. I just always seem to be the black sheep." She said carefully, thinking about each word as she said it. No weird changes in pronunciation. Good. That was odd. Whatever. She shrugged it off and zoned back in on what Howl was saying.

A thoughtful expression was on his face and he didn't appear to have said anything yet. "When do you turn nineteen, Sophie?"

"Eighteen. Ten…" she corrected and thinking about it realized that her days in Ingary had thrown off her perception of time. One week… "…Four days."

"I always forget that you always look older. Eighteen. Right. Less than a week?" He cursed. "I thought we had more time than that."

She looked older? Huh. Right. "More time? What do you mean?" She just knew that he was about to come out with something else that he hadn't told her and it wasn't going to be good.

"I'm going to put this very bluntly and implore you not to strangle me or pass out."

"Sure."

"You've only ever lived past seventeen once and even then you only made it to twenty-four." As he had expected, her eyes grew big and unfocused as her breath whooshed out and she swayed slightly. He stood quickly, and it was a good thing he did because just then her knees gave out. He caught her, the look in his eyes softening just a little bit only to be beaten down by the lack of a heartbeat in his chest. Jeez, she was a lot heavier than she looked! Maybe because she was pretty much dead weight right now. Not like him telling her not to pass out had helped, he thought as her eyelids fluttered. She was hovering between awareness and unconsciousness. She wasn't shocked to this state easily, Howl thought grimly. Must be tough.

Howl sat down on the bed, holding Sophie on his lap, and just waited. He stroked her hair gently, concentrating on trying to bring out some stronger feelings from within himself. Calcifer was probably ready to kill him from the continued onslaught of emotion that his heart was no doubt throbbing with but nevertheless did not, could not, reach Howl. Five minutes later, Sophie stirred.

Someone was running their fingers through her long hair soothingly, probably the same person that was holding her. It felt nice, and it was a new feeling to be treated as if she were made of glass and might suddenly crack and shatter if she wasn't handled delicately. After a minute, she was awakened slightly out of her haze of pleasant feelings by a light sigh coming from somewhere just above her head. She opened her eyes lazily and then had the overwhelming feeling that one gets when remembering a dream, or a solution that had been obvious but overlooked, or in her case, what had happened to make her pass out.

Realizing she was in Howl's arms, she looked up to see that her head had been neatly tucked into the crook of his neck and thought in the back of her mind that she had rather felt at home there. She righted herself, yet not moving from her seat on his lap, and blinked hard.

"Never getting to eighteen…" she murmured pensively. "Well, what am I supposed to do with my final week?"

Howl could think of plenty of things, but didn't say any of them, because this wasn't going to be her final week! Not this time. "It doesn't have to be that way!" he insisted.

"Do I have a predetermined expiration date on me? I wonder if my heart—huh. My heart. Will it just…give out?" she continued to ponder.

"Sophie. _Sophie_," he emphasized when her eyes kept their glazed-over look. She zoned back in and looked at him. "I'm not just going into denial—there _is _a way to stop it."

"It's no use—what?"

"I said, there's a way to stop it." _In theory_, he added to himself.

"Well do tell how I ended up dying before eighteen before."

Howl swallowed hard. He wouldn't tell her. He couldn't. She knew about the first time, but that was all. And if she hated him for it—he cringed inwardly—all hope was lost because they needed each other if she was going to live. If she hated him later for not telling her sooner…well, assuming she was still alive, she'd warm back up in a little bit. After all, his not telling her would have led to her living. Right. At least, that was what he told himself. He stuck to half the truth. "Think about that, Sophie. Who would want you dead?"

"The Witch."

"Precisely."

"So she cursed me to always die just before eighteen?"

"You can't do that, curses can't directly create death. Come on, Sophie, you're missing the obvious again."

Sophie sighed. Why was she so predictable? Overlooking the simplest of solutions…and she was still drawing a blank. She shrugged.

"She finds ways to kill you, of course. With much drama, too, as I'm sure we've discussed before. That was another reason she's waited til now and not sooner, let alone a year ago. She hardly leaves a day or two to spare."

Sophie's nose wrinkled adorably. "Ugh. Of course. So how do we stop it? I mean her. Or whatever. How do I stay alive?"

"Well, see, that part's all just a big theory right now, but the way I see it, it's looking like a rather pressing matter to see the spells you can do so fa—"

"Stop slithering out!" she scowled in his face.

"Slithering? I'm doing no such thing."

"Tell me about why this is a "theory" as you put it."

"Erm… Well what it all comes down to is how she tries to kill you and how we protect you."

"So it really is a big jumble of variables. Honesty's good, Howl. Keep working on that."

He wasn't sure if that was a compliment or not. He watched as she glared at the upturned palm of her hand in front of her face, a small glow appearing and then flaring into what looked like a miniature Calcifer. Minus the demon part, of course, but still. She was still sitting on his lap, having either not cared or not noticed. Howl was, sadly, betting on the latter.

He playfully swatted at her hand with a wave of ice water. She yelped and threw up a wall in front of the water and it absorbed the conjured liquid. She smiled evilly and shot the water back out at Howl. A dawning look of dismay had just shown itself when it hit him full in the face. Sophie laughed gleefully, at which a suddenly dry and grinning Howl attempted to suffocate her fire with a rapidly compacting bubble of air. She frowned slightly and tried to make the bubble bend to her will instead of his and in that fashion the two continued a tug-of-war-like game for a moment. The bubble just popped without warning from the opposing forces and the two both felt like they'd had a rug yanked from under them. Sophie crashed into Howl, who had been thrown forward to meet her halfway, sending them thudding to the floor in a heap. They were both laughing by now, but as Sophie rolled to get up and stood over Howl with a distinctly mischievous glint in her eyes, a look of apprehensive horror replaced his grin.

She flung her arm out to the side and a wall of water materialized over it, falling to soak Howl from head to foot. He froze momentarily from the sudden coldness and then shuddered and groaned. "Fine, fine, you win! Please don't hurt me." He knelt and shook his black hair like a dog.

Sophie uttered an unladylike snort. "Right. Like I could."

"Actually," he grumbled, "You were always better than me when it all came down to it."

She considered this and then cackled madly, spinning across the room. "Howl Pendragon admits defeat!"

"Shut up," he whined. "…Please?"

"Well, all right, but only since you've said the word 'please' a record two times in the last minute…"

"You're insufferable."

"Always have been, always will be! Just check out my record." She grinned at the old joke she and Maria had.

"You have a juvie record already?! Most definitely less innocent than before."

"Nah, it's just fun to say and watch the reaction. My school record. Everyone's got one, if you have the right connections you can access anyone's and—" she broke off abruptly. Howl followed her train of thought and groaned again.

"Oh, lord, no, she never could have…"

"And why not?" Sophie demanded. "She's a witch, she can appear as young and beautiful and persuasive as she wants. It'd be easy."

"So _that's _your secret!" Howl joked off-topic-edly.

"Oh, just can it, Howl, it'd be no use anyway."

"Fine, well, how do we know if she's done it or not?"

"Well, see, we have to actually get into the file room. Trying to detect it purely by magic is just too inaccurate, am I right?" she asked smugly.

Howl grunted. "Besides she'll trace the focus of the magic—she can sense it just like we can—right to the school and see what we're doing right away."

"As I thought. We'll have to take some less-than-desirable action here…"

"Action?"

"Shut up."

"You just like to tell me that, don't you?"

"Maybe. Anyhow, we're going to need that lock pick from last year…"

"You do get around, don't you."

"Hey, this is just being resourceful. We're going to have to do some smuggling, breaking, and entering, and we have to do it all without magic. You know," she looked at him thoughtfully, "I'm starting to think how much of a mess you'd be without your magic." He shuddered visibly at the thought, making her laugh.

* * *

"I feel like an idiot."

"We're going for functionality, here, not looks. You're fine, black suits you anyhow."

"Why thank you. I can safely say more than the same for you, Sophie dear." It was true, Howl thought. She looked stunning in any kind of anything, and the black just made her prettily white skin glow more.

"Aha! Got it." Sophie had just finished picking the lock on the back entrance to the school, through the janitors' garage-type space. Their feet padded almost silently into the first-floor hallway of the school, by the back of the cafeteria. Sophie had to drag Howl past the pictures of the horrifically perky cheerleading team by the arm.

"How—no, better question—_why_ do you know how to pick locks?" he asked once his attention was back on Sophie.

"You try getting locked out of the house in the middle of a near-hurricane when no one's home. You learn fast. It comes in handy, actually. No one certainly expects anything like that from me, of all people."

They reached a low balcony above the school offices and Howl unhesitatingly vaulted gracefully over the railing to land lightly on the floor. Sophie did the same and was unexpectedly caught by a strong pair of arms. There passed a few seconds during which she and Howl stared at each other (this would be denied by both parties later on) in wonder of the eyes looking back. Sophie's thoughts were mostly centered around, _How could this beautiful creature be chasing after me? I don't see why I'm worth it…look at those eyes… _Howl was thinking, _Sophie, you're beautiful inside and out…how can't you see it? I could never be deserving of you no matter what…_ The moonlight that was filtering through the tall windows cast a calming glow on everything. It glinted off Howl's raven hair, off Sophie's necklace, off their locked gazes. Howl hesitated before righting Sophie on her feet resignedly.

She mentally slapped herself and nodded coolly in gratitude for catching her, before moving to the office door across the lobby. In another two minutes (it would have been one if Howl hadn't unintentionally kept distracting her!) they were inside and hunting for the file room. In there, Sophie tried to keep form banging the cabinet doors looking for the H's. She finally found it. H…H-A…H-A-T. Lettie, Martha…and no Sophie. Hm.

She looked up. "No go."

"No transactions are in the reports, either. Even better." Howl was rifling through a black notebook.

The slightest sound came from outside the office and down the hall. Howl's temporarily magically enhanced hearing picked it up and his head snapped up. It came again. He swiftly took a confused-looking Sophie around the waist and whisked her back out into the hall, shutting the door silently behind them. When she looked at him concernedly, he motioned for her to be quiet, and _let's go now!_ She nodded vigorously, trusting his judgment for now, and pointed down the hall that led straight to where they had come in.

As they took off down the hall at a run, Sophie's lungs threatened to start hyperventilating with expectant fear. Something had obviously spooked Howl, and that in turn frightened her. Not to mention that the black hallways and creepy darker spots seemed like they were closing in on them. Every shadow scared her and she wanted to just use her magic to light it all up and get _out_, but—

Two arms shot out of nowhere, one clamping effectively over her otherwise ear-piercing scream, and the other snatching her around the waist, also pinning her arms.

Sophie was absolutely terrified by now and didn't know who or what was holding her, and her hardwired instincts kicked in as she tried in vain to kick, or twist, or escape, or something. Anything! But unlike most times, a few brief seconds that felt much longer than that passed with nothing happening whatsoever in the way of freeing herself.

Howl, in the meantime, had noticed the abrupt change, or rather, lack of movement five feet behind him and spun quickly, scanning the empty hall with fearful blue eyes. Then he noticed the very slight alcove set next to an offshooting hall, and the barest flicker of movement from the shadow of the niche. He slid to a stop in the opening to see a struggling Sophie being held tightly by a…a…what was that? Oh. Right. A blob-man. One of the Witch's…oh, fiddlesticks. He knew that the blob could just go through a wall under normal circumstances, but since his orders seemed to have been "get the girl" he couldn't do that because Sophie, in contrast, was perfectly solid. The blob actually made it easier for Howl by immediately jumping at him, and rather substantially, with not as much of the flowing, gloopy usual motion. A new prototype the Witch was trying out, maybe? Well, it was attacking Howl, so now wasn't the time to think.

Sophie would have gasped in relief if she had had any air to do it with when Howl's shape appeared in the very faintest trace of moonlight in front of the alcove she'd been pulled into. It was a blob-man, she realized as it let her go and launched itself at Howl. One of the Witch's henchmen. They needed to get out—now. But what could she do? Howl and the blob were grappling with each other in the middle of the hall.

The blob-man landed a kick on Howl's side and he gasped slightly in pain. "Sophie, run!" he cried to her.

She froze for a mere fraction of a second. She absolutely was not going to leave him here! But an idea struck her and she sprinted for the exit.

Howl would have just about died on the spot if he hadn't been in the middle of a fight with a blob. She had actually listened to him, done as he had told her, with no encouragement to speak of! She was never going to live that down…assuming he got out of here before the Witch or god-knew-what-else arrived.

Sophie skidded to a half just inside the door. What was she doing? She couldn't just run, even if Howl was scared out of his wits! Especially if he was scared. That meant he needed her help. Time to face the fear, Sophie, she told herself grimly as she pivoted and raced back to Howl.

Howl was clearly fighting a losing battle. It was weird. The blob was really more solid than it should have been and as a result was doing a lot more damage. He saw a shape moving toward them fast from the exit and experienced a second of despair before he realized that he recognized the pounding of the person's feet. What was she doing! She had to get out!

Sophie darted back down the hall and advanced on the surprisingly solid-looking blob from behind. Said blob turned to see this new threat and how he remembered it later was that he was literally shocked into substantiality, into his real form. Sophie's mouth dropped open in shock.

Howl was about to jump on him from behind and Sophie screamed, "_Stop!_"

Howl gave her a look from behind the ex-blob that plainly said "What are you doing?" except with a whole lot more of expletives.

She focused on the other figure, craning her neck to see his face. He was clearly a real human that had been disguised—she could tell now, even without fully activating her magic. And her suspicions were confirmed. "Justin," she said calmly, a hint of a question in her slightly quavering statement.

Howl immediately caught on and appeared in front of Sophie, yanking her behind him. "And what is it you want?" he snarled.

"S-Sophie?" Justin gasped, ignoring the man.

"Good to see you again," Sophie said as coolly as she could manage, after a few seconds of deafening silence. It was still such a shock to realize that he was alive and breathing, and even more so that he was standing in front of her. She had long since had to accept his death and had tried to move on, and now that part of her was trying frantically to gather itself up and turn itself around.

"I…Look, Soph, I…" he sighed dejectedly. "It can't change anything, but I'm sorry."

Sophie's eyes softened slightly and she stepped the rest of the way out from behind Howl. "I know you are, and I wish it could too." He had been her best friend, after all.

"…You do?"

"Of course. But why are you here now?"

He looked around anxiously. "I was supposed to get a hold of whoever came here…I guess it was you after all."

"So now what?" Howl asked tightly. His jaw was clenched.

"_You_ tell me, ah, Wizard Howl, is it?"

"This seems to have been _your_ mission—"

"Chill, guys. Take a pill." Sophie rolled her eyes and stepped into the no-man's-land between them.

Justin stifled a snicker at the mildly confused look on Howl's face at the idiom.

"We're going to need to be gone, and you're going to need a legit excuse." She turned to her friend and saw Howl stiffen out of the corner of her eye. "What's wrong?" He didn't look well at all. He just shook his head. He couldn't believe this idiot was here. Hadn't he done enough damage already? And Sophie, no less, was standing up for him! Why didn't she realize that he couldn't be trusted? She was too naïve for her own good.

Suddenly a crackly voice boomed out of nowhere. "Howl! Howell Jenkins! _The Witch is coming!_"

A look of alarm crossed Sophie's face before she realized it was Calcifer, then a more frightened look showed itself. Howl looked vaguely faint. "We have seconds," he said, recovering for Sophie's sake. "Time for us to take off!" When Sophie opened her mouth with a look he recognized all too well, he tacked on "_Now?_" for emphasis.

"Um, bye!" she called to Justin as Howl all but dragged her toward the door. She saw him nod with a small smile before turning to run through the whirls of large snowflakes that had begun to fall from the night sky.


	10. Chapter 10

February Breath

Disclaimer: No owning of gorgeous wizards, sarcastic fire demons, or common others, to my great regret.

**A/N: Again, too long between the updates! I apologize… But tell me how you like it. In which Howl has some serious angst issues, Sophie finds out some things about Howl, and…well…anything else would be spoiling it :) Enjoy.**

Howl wheezed heavily as he flopped down on Sophie's bed. "That was most definitely _not _an enjoyable experience." He wasn't going to say that that was due in a large part to Sophie's incredibly jealous…friend? Ex-friend? Whatever he counted as.

"Tell me about it," she groaned before retreating into the bathroom for fifteen minutes. When she came back out, Howl was in his sleepclothes but had sacked out on her bed. She smiled and rolled her eyes. So typical. In a moment she realized that a) he was not waking up anytime soon, b) no way could she move him, and c) she was just as tired as he seemed to be. So she let him be and curled up on the opposite end, placing a mild spell to tell her if he woke up or deliberately moved.

A few hours later, Howl started dreaming. And a wizard's dreams are never meaningless. He was standing in a crowd, one of the few who were silent while the rest were yelling and waving things. A girl had been accused and proven of practicing witchcraft and she was about to die. He watched through blue glass eyes, eyes like marble, cold and unfeeling. He felt nothing. No remorse, no grief, no protesting voice inside of him.

Then the scene zoomed out and refocused in, on a window across the square from where the girl was dying. He was tied down, both physically and magically, in an abandoned attic, with the Witch of the Waste cackling delightedly in his mind. He couldn't break them! Not the spells, not the chains, nothing he could do could save her. He was too late…too slow… Why had he done what he had? And why did he see himself standing silent in the crowd down in the square, his face blank of emotion? He screamed her name.

"Howl?"

His dark-lashed eyes opened wide to meet concerned gray ones. "Sophie!" He lurched forward and nearly crushed her in an embrace. "It was all my fault, all my fault… I'm so sorry," he gasped, shuddering.

Sophie wondered at his change in emotion and tentatively gave him a squeeze back. "It's all right, I'm right here. Just calm down, everything's okay." She tried to pacify him and his shaking gradually slowed under her touch. His breathing evened out again and his shudders ceased. He collapsed against her, back in a dead sleep again. "_Oof! _Jeez, Howl." He didn't stir. With some effort, she laid him back down on her bed and covered him with the quilt.

She flopped backwards as well, exhaling softly. Thank goodness she had a snow day today—she was exhausted from last night's events, both physically and mentally. The snow must have started falling thicker through the night. Besides, now she and Howl could come up with a way to keep Sophie alive and somehow defeat the Witch of the Waste…in a minute she's get up…but she was so…tired….

Howl awoke around eleven o'clock in the morning to see Sophie peacefully asleep next to him. His eyes took in the sleep-softened lines of her face; the way her long waves of hair pooled on the pillow; the way her mouth characteristically indented into a small frown a she slept. What was he going to do about her? So beautiful, yet almost cold. Like his heart. But he knew that Sophie wasn't unfeeling. She was a very sensitive person, even without her magic. And if he had his heart, he could truthfully say that he was in love with the girl lying by him. But he didn't. So he couldn't. And it didn't look promising in the respect that she might come after him first. Speaking of which…where was the Witch of the Waste? She had to make her move soon, and it was only making Howl more anxious. A few more days and she'd be cutting it awfully close. The closer the time, the more public and horrible the death.

Although, technically, the Witch hadn't been the one killing Sophie before. That was just what he'd told Sophie. He ended up responsible all the time. But his dream had confused him. Why were there two of him? And why was the cold, indifferent one the one visible to the world, to Sophie as she died because of him? He had seen—and never wished to again—the expression on her face as she found his glass-marble eyes and lack of concern. For what may have been the millionth time, he wished he could really remember what had happened that day.

It was Wednesday morning. And her birthday was the coming Saturday. Three days. He shifted carefully closer to Sophie so he could see her better and, although unbeknownst to him, his blue eyes lost a little of their glasslike focus and deepened ever so slightly. He lifted one of her small hands gently and felt her pulse. He wished he had some kind of proof that he was alive. He didn't pretend to understand the finer points of how he continued to live without a heartbeat.

Sophie's eyes eased open slowly and she noticed the soft pressure on her wrist. "Howl?" she muttered sleepily, covering a yawn. "What are you doing?" she woke up more. Wow, she had slept long.

He smiled secretively. "Nothing." He released her slowly. "You have a pulse." He realized it might be a good idea to try to give her a hint to the contract between him and Calcifer.

"You act like I'm so miraculous. Of course I do."

He kept smiling. Sophie didn't get it, but something was bothering her. She suddenly seized a hold of his hand and pressed her fingers to his wrist. She was expecting a beat to come eventually. It didn't. She cocked her head to the side in confusion and moved her fingers slightly. Still nothing. She looked up at him with wide eyes. He kept smiling.

"I'm going to guess you can't talk about it." When he was silent she really started thinking, a little deterred by her drowsiness.

What had Howl tried to say before? Calcifer had…something. And he kept it with him all the time. What could a fire demon be holding every minute of every day? She felt like she was missing something incredibly obvious and huge…so like her to do that! "Rrrrgh!" she expressed her frustration. It was like trying to remember a dream that she knew was important but couldn't quite grasp…it was right…there… She reached for it with her magic. Her head started to hurt and she sighed, breaking off her improvised spell. "What can't I think of?"

Howl was obviously disappointed. He had really thought she was going to come out with it. "It's all right, for now. Just think on it."

She made a vague noise that suggested she was annoyed with herself. It seemed like everyone around here had memory problems. Maybe all magic people were certifiably insane as well.

"'If thou beest born to strange sights, things impossible to see…'" Howl murmured in cadence, apparently picking up on her thoughts.

"Hm?"

"An old curse. Mine, actually. The Witch set it on me, last time. You saved me from it once it came true."

"Is that part about being a wizard?"

"Yeah. I was born in this world but something wasn't quite right, like, for example, seeing strange things. Like hallucinations, only I saw people's auras, sensed their intentions…even accidentally picked up on their thoughts. I thought I was going crazy by the time I was about eight, then Mrs. Penstemmon found me."

"Your teacher?" At this Howl nodded. "What did you do in…wherever you were born. Where was it? Did you have any siblings? How—"

"You ask a lot of questions," Howl said, faking crossness.

She grinned impudently. "I like knowing things."

"Fine. I lived in Wales and have a sister."

"You're such a guy—"

"Well, hopefully—"

"—you hardly answer the question."

He sighed theatrically, flopping back on the bed and throwing an arm over his eyes. "I shall never escape your torments."

"Get used to it. I'm sticking around for a while," she said grimly, hoping it was true.

"My sister's name is Megan. She likes to yell at me. She's married to Gareth and they have two children, Mari and Neil. The end."

"Likes to yell at you? I can't imagine why."

He grunted moodily. Sophie rolled her eyes and snickered. After a moment of silently laughing at each other, knowing perfectly well that the other was doing it, Sophie paused and made a face. "What's that?"

Howl's head snapped up and he immediately jumped up with a yelp, throwing himself at Sophie and pinning her to the ground protectively. A tiny box smashed through one of her windowpanes, whistling through the air. It wouldn't have looked like much except that in a second it caused a minor explosion, blowing papers everywhere and knocking the wind out of Howl and Sophie, on the ground. Things slowly settled to the ground. The box was gone and a single slip on red paper was left drifting to the floor slowly.

Panting, Howl stood. "Wind bomb," he wheezed.

Sophie coughed and gasped for air. "Right."

"Oh, and scorch marks. Lovely."

Sophie looked and saw that the second the paper came into contact with Howl's hand it disintegrated and left some lines and shapes seared into her floor in what looked like the ashes of glowing coals.

Howl peered at the markings. "You who swa— never mind. Bad idea. Can you try to read them?" he asked Sophie imploringly.

"This should be interesting." She bent down, her head too close to Howl's for total comfort. "Okay, so there's a person…a man, I guess. Is that a shooting star above him? And that there looks like a heart next to him. All right. He had a heart attack and set off some fireworks." Howl made a face. "No? Are you sure? Kidding, Howl, kidding." The wizard slapped himself on the forehead and was eyeing the wall like he wanted to try that out for size too. "So…he lost his heart and it turned into a shooting star?" She looked at Howl, who tilted his head to the side in a 'sort-of' kind of gesture. "He wished on a shooting star for love. No? He gave his heart…" Howl had that look on his face that people will give you behind someone else's back, when they can't tell you anything but they're trying to convey something and you're just on the edge of getting it. "…Because of the meteor shower." Howl looked depressed, then brightened at the last two words. "Meteor shower? Falling stars? He gave his heart…to…a falling star." She made a face. That didn't make any sense at all.

But Howl actually started jumping up and down excitedly. He was still unable to speak so he began waving his arms wildly.

"We…us…me…you…_you? You_ gave your heart to the falling star?" She suddenly grasped what she had overlooked, like a fogged window clearing, and she gasped. "_Calcifer!_" she nearly shrieked.

Howl let out a laugh of triumph and crushed her in his arms, kissing her soundly before practically waltzing around the room.

"Dammit, would you stop doing that?" Sophie muttered, telling herself that she didn't enjoy it in the least. Lies are quite interesting things.

"YOUDIDITYOUDIDITYOUDIDIT—" Howl was acting like a kid, laughing like a madman, apparently having regained his vocal abilities.

Sophie rolled her eyes and then concentrated hard. _Calcifer…_

"_What do you want—what in the name of all that's holy is Howl doing?"_

"_I guessed the curse thing, apparently that's some kind of big de—"_

"_You guessed it?!" _ The demon cut her off.

"Of course, now what does that mean?"

"_Well, now you have to figure out how to break it, see, and get Howl's heart back to him in the process, hopefully keeping us both alive."_

"_So no pressure."_

"_Did I mention you have until your birthday and probably not even until then?"_

"_You mean until the sadistic homicidal tub of lard that's out to get me makes an appearance?"_

Calcifer crackled fiercely with laughter, sending up purple sparks. _"Vicious words from such a pretty girl. But yeah. That's pretty much the deal."_

Sophie couldn't help the little spots of pink that crept up her face. Even coming from a demon, she wasn't used to being complimented so.

"_Gotta run. The Witch's demon is trying to get through our defenses here."_

"_Wait—the Witch has one too?"_

"_Yeah, ask Howl—he can talk about that. Later." _And his presence flitted off into nothingness, leaving a lingering trace of warmth.

Sophie turned to Howl. "The Witch has a fire demon too?" She knew he'd been listening in but didn't catch the vaguely dreamy look that he got on his face when Calcifer called her pretty and she blushed.

"Er…yes. A female." He fidgeted uncomfortably.

She fixed him with a calculating eye and perceived the source of his discomfort. "Don't tell me you tried to_ pursue _the_ demon_."

He stammered a few awkward excuses before collecting himself. Only Sophie could make him so uncomfortable like this, and she knew it, too. "She's quite beautiful when she's in human form," he stated plaintively. Not that anyone, supernatural or not, could surpass Sophie in his eyes in that particular area of focus. Any given quality, actually. She was like an angel; no, she _was _an angel. His angel. His reason. His salvation.

She gave him an impressive eyeroll. "Uhhhh-huh."

--------------

The rest of the day passed rather uneventfully, excluding a freak accident involving a toaster, a box of matches, a rather large and sharp kitchen knife, and Howl's unfailing ineptitude with modern inventions. Let us just say that we now know the following things: one, contrary to Howl's initial impressions, toasters do not need to be lit in order to work. Two, said toasters are not to be mistaken for knife racks. Three, Sophie had quite the impressive scream when sharp objects were flying through the air. Four, Howl's one useful skill was repairing certain holes in certain walls from certain incidents.

Thursday was much the same as Monday and Tuesday had been, although the staring in school had died down considerably by now. She was, in contrast, a little less oblivious to the significant looks the boys seemed to give her, though. And she was enjoying it all! She discovered that she actually like to be acknowledged; for people to know her name and her as an individual. She was no longer just Martha's sister, or Lettie's, or the unknown firstborn child, or the unremarkable and nondescript one. She felt…what was the right word…_special_. She didn't need to be the proverbial blond cheerleader that went through five boyfriends and ten hookups per week to be popular. There was a difference between popular and _popular_. She found herself to be liked by people and for them to actually enjoy her presence. She didn't need exotic beauty or dramatic gossip or anything superficial at all. She could be more than happy with her laughter, the company of her friends, and more constructive ways to occupy her time than shuffling along and hiding behind her hair. She delighted in it.

And Howl watched her. She didn't realize it, but he was observing her more closely than he had before. She was…happy. Content with finding herself and knowing what she wanted. Well, maybe nothing big-picture, but maybe the beginnings of securing herself a place. She was more fantastic than she knew. He had known that forever, but he liked seeing her embrace it as well, at last. But the feeling was bittersweet.

Once they were back at Sophie's house after school, Howl stated absently that he'd be back in a bit. Sophie warned him to be careful and he agreed distractedly, already setting the basis for a strong protection spell around the area. When he was satisfied with his work he changed to his winged form, still invisible, and flew back toward the high school, specifically the woods where he had first formally met her.

Not much had changed. Snow still blanketed the ground, although there was much more of it due to the storm two nights ago.

Do you usually keep this kind of company?

His first words to her. Also her first ever words to him, the very first time.

_Sophie. Wait._

He landed silently on a snow-covered branch and crouched, absorbed in thought. He always ended up attempting to hold her back. To make her wait. That never worked very well.

_I'm so sorry if I don't remember you somehow…_

She had been so confused. She thought she was supposed to know him. But she didn't. Maybe it would have been better, that way. But that was crazy—leave her to fend for herself against the Witch of the Waste?

_But I know who you are._

Then again… He knew her, more than she thought. Maybe if he had never showed up…_ever_…she wouldn't be put through this grief all the time. If he just disappeared…

Can you trust me?

Of course she couldn't trust him. She learned that the hard way—Howl nearly choked on his thoughts—every time.

How can I trust you?

She couldn't ever risk it. Howl knew that. And then and there, he had a revelation.

Please?

He couldn't change what he was. He had to go away and never come back. It was better…safer…and Sophie would be all right. She could handle herself well enough by now, and the Witch's obsession had been all about tearing them apart, right? So if he just let her alone to continue her life in happy bliss… There was his answer.

He couldn't help himself—he had to go back to her once more, if only to check the protection spells around her. He wanted to see her face. He silently took to the air yet again.

**A/N: Oh no! Angst…confusion…love? You never know. But—Sophie guessed the curse! And Howl kissed her again ^^ if only in brevity. After a magical bomb flies in the window, naturally. But how's Sophie feeling about all this? And, excuse me, what exactly is going on with the Witch and Justin this whole time! Don't worry, don't worry, it's all coming. Feel free to speculate and share by commenting :)**


	11. Chapter 11

February Breath

**Disclaimer: I diss any claims.**

**A/N: What has it been, like, two weeks? :O I know, I know sorry to keep you hanging! It's almost done…just one more chapter after this one I think! Sorry again, I know this one's wicked short, but it's all I've had time to do. Very emotional, though. Feedback is much appreciated :) Enjoy!**

**Chapter 11**

Sophie was home by herself again and had clambered out her bathroom window onto the roof of her house, just because she could. The incident a year ago hadn't affected her love for heights—and flight, apparently—and was much less painful now that she knew the truth. Well, she was still confused about Justin. She sighed. Her ex-best friend. What a cliché! But it was so accurate in this case.

-------------

Justin paced restlessly in his room in the Witch's castle. The Witch had said that they need not expose themselves by staying in Sophie's world and they could get there any time they wished. Well, he _wished _otherwise. He couldn't help that Sophie was his friend. Okay, so maybe he wanted them to be more than friends, so what? He hated trying to keep up with so much going on at once! He kicked the wall in frustration.

He knew that the Witch wanted Sophie dead. Disapproved. And he knew that she wanted Justin to play some kind of role in it. Definitely disapproved. He knew that she wanted Howl for herself. Disapproved for moral reasons—even if he didn't particularly like Howl, that was just _gross_. He knew that that night was the biggest festival of the year in Sophie's town, like, its birthday: a hugely public event with lots of people and lots of potential tools for murder around. Majorly disapproved.

He knew that the Witch was pretty convinced of Justin's loyalty. And Sophie's own eighteenth birthday was in two days. It was just too close. The Witch would be trying something tonight, he just knew it.

And he knew he had to do something to stop it.

-------------

Howl lighted on Sophie's roof and nearly died when he saw that she was up there as well. He hadn't seen her at first, concealed as she was by the lengthening shadows from the fast-fading light in the sky.

God, but she was amazing. He couldn't even stand how much he loved her—or should have loved her. His heart was probably going insane.

Suddenly Sophie turned and looked straight at him. Howl felt like she pierced right into what should have been his soul when she did that. Of course she could see right through the invisibility spell.

"Howl?" she tilted her head to the side. "Where have you been? I—"

"Sophie," he began quietly. She immediately stopped and knew something was wrong. He looked at her for a long time while she waited patiently. Then he spoke again. "…I won't put you in danger any longer."

"Wh-what?" she stammered, utterly confused, pivoting to fully face him. She hadn't expected him to say something like that.

"I won't deny that I'll miss you. But I can't put you through this any more and I was too blind to see the solution earlier."

"What are you talking about?" she asked more firmly. She didn't want to acknowledge the little part of her that knew exactly what was going on.

"I'm leaving you, Sophie." He loved to say her name; it just rolled right off his tongue. "I know you probably won't mind me being gone, so just…live a normal life, okay? Forget about me. You won't be bothered by me again, I promise you that."

"N…No… No, you can't, why…? I won't be any safer!" she blurted out. He wasn't leaving! How could he? Was he trying to get her killed or something? She didn't think through that thought and didn't bother trying to.

"Yes, you will. It was all my fault. I was the problem, not you. You could never do any wrong…so I'm doing this for your sake."

"Howl, you're crazy, you're not thinking straight! I…" She just didn't know what to say. How to make him stay. It didn't even occur to her why she found it so urgent that he not go away.

"You'll never hear of me again. And, Sophie… Thank you."

What?

"…Goodbye."

And he disappeared, even to her eyes.

How?

Why?

Caught in an endless whirlpool of her thoughts, she suddenly thought she glimpsed the barest outline of a winged figure soaring through the sky. _Th__ere!_ She jumped from the roof, casting her own wings spell at the same time, as well as invisibility. She took off after him into the rapidly darkening sky.

---------------

It was over. He had done it. Somehow, he just felt a lot worse. He only wanted to protect her…it was for her sake; for the best.

Wings? Sophie—?! He was halfway into doing a one-eighty in midair but was greeted only by shockingly unfeeling blackness. He was out cold in a fraction of a second without even realizing it.

----------------

Howl tried to groan, but found that he couldn't make a noise. He felt terrible. Drugged. And he was in a prison cell with stone walls. A cell with—

"_You!_" he snarled, crying out with his mind as well as speaking, and lunging for the boy across the room, his pain temporarily shoved aside. The blonde stepped back calmly as Howl was yanked back by the chains that encircled his wrists and led to the wall. Howl consented to fiercely glaring through the raven hair that was falling into his eyes. "I knew it. I knew it all along. You were never Sophie's friend," he accused.

Justin fought to keep his face devoid of emotion. Of course he had been her friend… She was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time. But he couldn't say that now, not here, where certain _people_ were without a doubt listening. "I did what I had to," he said calmly.

"Naturally. I suppose you feel no regret for that, either," Howl spat.

"I refuse to have this conversation with you." He turned and left the cell, striding briskly down the dank corridor, his back rigid.

"Don't walk away from me!" Howl yelled after him. "Some hero you are, always running away." He noticed with satisfaction that Justin stopped in his tracks and went absolutely still.

"I didn't run away from her," he said quietly. He didn't need to specify the 'her.'

"Oh, so it wasn't your fault, either."

"There was no fault to be spoken of."

"What, hurting her doesn't count as wrongdoing? You never loved her." This guy ticked Howl off an incredible amount. How could he be so horrible to Sophie? Sophie, who would never do anyone or anything harm. Justin—he hated the name now—had let her into his life, befriended her, made her trust him, believe in him. Only to turn around and have a hand in attempts on her life.

Justin struggled to keep a hold on himself as he tried to calmly open the door.

"_Traitor!_" Howl screamed after him as the heavy door clanged shut.

**A/N: …And suddenly it ends. Hm…what shall happen? These angsty men. *shakes head* Well, whatcha gonna do. The next chapter will be the last, I think :( But you'll know what happens then! :D It will all become clear… Let me know your thoughts, speculations, rants…whatever. Reviews always make me happy! Thanks for reading.**


	12. Chapter 12

**February Breath**

**Disclaimer: Six months since I started this story, and yet somehow I still don't own Howl's Moving Castle. Huh. Funny how these things happen…**

**A/N: YES, I'm back! I have not in fact completely dropped off the face of this good earth! :D It's been, oh yeah— Four. Months. Since. The. Last. Update. …Oops? Sorry sorry sorry and sorry again my lovely people, I thought it had been waaay less time than that! What's that? You thought I dropped it! With an ending like that? I think not. So I spent about three hours in the car just writing and editing (really good way to kill time) and this is my result…I'm rather proud, actually, and everything should be clear by the end! Well…almost everything. This isn't actually the last chapter like I said it would be—waaaay too long of an ending-type-thing here already, never mind working out all the after-details. So I hope you enjoy the almost-conclusion to our dramatic tale, and review please! :)**

**Chapter 12**

Sophie searched the dim sky frantically. Where had Howl gone all of a sudden? Damn, he was probably using some kind of invisibility thing that she couldn't see through much less know anything about. It didn't help that twilight was naturally the hardest time of day to see at. Oh, wait—there he was. He had abruptly switched directions.

Why was he running, or rather, flying, from her? Didn't he understand that she needed him? Of course, to protect her, that was all. Well, no; she didn't _need_ protecting! She was perfectly fine all on her own, and he was a useless, selfish cheater of a brat anyway. But he had been around magic his whole life. So had she, supposedly, but it wasn't like she'd had any clue. Hello. Did he think he was helping by leaving? If the Witch was only after him anyways, then why had Sophie been pulled into it all in the first place? Maybe the Witch was trying to use Sophie to get to Howl…but how? That didn't make any sense. What were they to each other, really? Well, okay, so she had saved him from the Witch the first time, the _very_ first time, but then (this was the killer, no pun intended) he had proceeded to repay her by tearing her heart out. O-kay then. That still confused her. After she had had the dream, Howl had practically been begging her to forgive him, saying that even now he had no idea what he had been thinking, and he couldn't actually remember any of that particular sequence of horrid events. Something didn't add up, and she intended to follow him now and shake the truth out of him no matter what.

She grimly increased her speed in a flurry of feathers the color of snow and started gaining on Howl, only to have him accelerate as well. She followed him, her annoyance and confusion growing, all the way to the grounds of the town festival. There were people everywhere—literally the entire town must be here! She remembered that she hadn't told anyone where she was. Oh, well. She was bound to find her family here, after she was done squeezing some answers out of Howl and dragging him with her if that was what it took. Heck, he could meet her family! She almost laughed at the thought of that, then stopped when she saw that Howl was losing altitude fast. She followed in his exact path as he landed lightly on the flat roof of a tall building at the very edge of the scene of the festivities. It looked like an apartment complex.

"You get back here and do some explaining, sir!" she snapped just as she hit the roof as well. He had paced off towards the other side and turned back to her halfway.

"Explain what?" he asked lazily.

"Um, excuse me? Flying off after saying you're leaving to protect me, out of nowhere?"

"What's to explain? I told you what my reasons are."

"You are so…so…gah! I just don't even know. Your reasons are dumb and your logic has obviously been seriously screwed with. Do I need more of a motive for tracking you down than that?"

"But what don't you understand? It all fits." He shifted a little bit more in her direction.

"Does _not! _In the first place, your leaving leaves me vulnerable, no matter what you say. In the second place, IF the Witch is only after you and IF I'll be completely safe, do you really think I could let you go off all alone like the idiot you are?" She was on a roll now. "And you should know that you can't just go waltzing off into the sunset without bothering to stick around to, I dunno, answer someone's questions about the lives they've already lived that they don't remember hardly anything of?"

"I said I would solve everything, and that's exactly what I intend on doing."

Sophie waited for him to elaborate and got only a simplistic look as a response. As she tried and failed to probe into the cerulean depths of his eyes, she sensed that something was just a little bit off about him. Something was slightly tweaked about the facial expression; the way he was holding himself. Maybe it was her imagination, but he didn't seem all too stable at the moment. It seemed like just a little shove would send him right off the edge into…what? Either way, when she attempted to infiltrate his mind, a solid wall blocked her path. A _spiked_ wall, jeez! She had to subtly check to make sure that the mental impact hadn't actually physically damaged her.

"Well, how are you '_intending'_ on 'solving everything'?" she asked directly.

"That's simple enough, Sophie. Surely you could see that."

Well, what the hell with the enigmatic responses! Did he really have to do this?

Apparently sensing her irritation, he continued. "Any solution is found by eliminating the source of the problem, and therefore the problem itself." It sounded like a chant out of a textbook.

"And the problem is…?" she said slowly. Maybe he was talking about just going gallivanting off to 'slay the demon', or rather, the Witch. Well, supposedly she had a demon at her disposal as well, so that did work. Speaking of demons. She reached out and tried to contact Calcifer. _Come on, Cal, I need help here… Back me up, buddy…_ But she was getting nothing in response. Not even a flicker of how the fire demon was feeling. That was odd enough in itself. Calcifer was always ready for her or Howl, at any time. Maybe he was occupied? Yet somehow that just didn't sound right.

"If you think," she went on, fuming, "you're going to go off to slay the dragon or whatever, you're not doing it without me."

He smiled, too coldly, taking another step toward her, with several yards still between them. This was all too much fun, he thought.

"Has it not occurred to you that I'm not going anywhere?" she continued, throwing her hands in the air.

Howl flicked a barely perceptible glance at the corner of the roof. Good. _He_ was still there, and really, not putting up much of a fight. Disappointing. It was all about the drama, here. _He_ would get riled up soon enough, and Howl could just stand there and laugh as _he_ crashed and burned for once. He could hardly wait…

"What brought this on, anyhow? Bad timing?" Sophie was on a roll now.

As a matter of fact, it was all 'bad timing,' especially for the girl. Howl blinked slowly, languidly, checking the corner again. Well, to his credit, _he_ was looking rather pained. Distraught and somehow furious. Not like it would make any difference. He would have to watch, have to see this, no matter what.

"You could have just told me: this is our problem and we need to go fix it, now let's go! But—"

"That, my dear, would be an inaccurate statement to make."

"—Huh?" was her ever-intelligent reply.

"Inaccurate. False. Erroneous."

"I know what that means, thanks," she snapped again. "What's so wrong?"

"…There is no problem to 'go' and fix." He stressed the one word.

"Why? Howl, just spit it out and get on with it already. You're acting so weird."

Howl's frosty smile grew slightly as a thrill radiated from the man in the corner when Sophie said Howl's name. Of course, Sophie couldn't see the man. No one could, for the moment. But the world was completely open to him, and he had to see it regardless.

"Sophie, dear—_you_ are the problem." He was even closer to her, not two yards away.

"I—_what?_ Howl, if you would just—"

"Shhhh. Why do you think things happen like they always have?" He had suddenly rematerialized right in front of her, one hand cupping her face delicately. "All these lifetimes…do you really not remember how it always ends?"

It hit her what he was trying to say. She felt her body wanting to submit to the urge to start shaking uncontrollably, to hyperventilate, out of the pure intuition that had been wired into her long ago and since only reinforced. But she refused and clenched her fists tight to keep from releasing the pent-up compulsion to panic. "I don't know what you're say—"

"Oh, you know perfectly well what I am saying." He stroked her face and tucked her hair behind her ear carefully.

_As if,_ she thought venomously. Crap. Now what? She fought down the deep instinct to lose control, to bolt, and tried to think of a way to face him down. He wasn't acting right. Nothing was right about him. Her nostrils flared in anger and with the action she caught a whiff of the air around them. There was a musky smoke from firecrackers and sparklers far below on the fairgrounds. There was the cold clarity of winter and snow and night and darkness. But there was none of the hyacinth or warmth that filled the surrounding air when Howl was nearby. Another scent replaced it, oddly stifling and heavy. Almost sickly-sweet but polluted with something unidentifiable at the same time. And it was strangely, vaguely, barely familiar. She temporarily shoved down the pressing sense of wrongness and turned all—and absolutely _all_—her senses to the urgently impending feeling of, oh yeah: _danger_.

There seemed to be one 'solution' to this 'problem.' 'Eliminating' her would apparently be enough, and that was creepy-sounding enough to begin with.

What was the most overwhelming was the sense of betrayal. He'd been living with her, helping her as she helped him, saying he wanted to protect her. And now he was turning around and expressing the desire to _kill_ her? She felt strangely calm as she digested the words in her mind. She didn't want it to happen like that, surely, but she felt like either the meaning hadn't fully sunk in or she had a death wish anyway. And she was pretty sure that she wanted to live.

The one thing she had at her disposal was her magic, really…which he knew more of, despite any claims he might have made to make her believe that she was the stronger one. For all she knew, it was an elaborate ploy for her to let her guard down around him, out of self-confidence. Had that just been his plan all along, to make her feel assured so he could tear it all down?

So she looked him straight in the (yet again peculiarly wrong) eye and stated, "You can kill me, but you can't control me."

This took him off guard and he drew back almost imperceptibly, a thin line appearing between his brows.

Then something appeared to click in his mind and he smiled.

And that was perhaps the most frightening thing of all.

"But now where's the fun in that?" he murmured after a few seconds of the frigid breeze tugging at their clothes and the sound of a crowd of conversations drifting up to the rooftop from the spaces below. And he lunged for her, so quickly that she thanked any available or listening higher power that she had had a spell for a wall of Power firing up since his first creepy statement. He met the wall and blasted it aside with something of his own, to which she muttered something and tried to paralyze him. He dodged and shot something else at her, a grim expression taking over his handsome face.

Sophie had to forget that she was fighting for her life against the one person in this world or any other who knew her better than anyone.

The two of them were battling back and forth, Sophie trying not to leave any openings and working with what she knew plus pure inborn instinct. But she still knew that he was holding back, just toying with her. They had both risen slightly into the air and were whizzing in endless circles of pursuit and evasion, casting illusions all over the place, each trying to distract or deceive the other. As they continued, a corner of Sophie's mind noticed that Howl's form, his very shape, wavered slightly each time he went to cast an illusion. Especially his eyes. They were turning more turquoise than cobalt by the second. It was a bit like a hologram. A millisecond was wasted dwelling on this, and then she saw that a huge ball of what she sensed as pure energy was gathering between them. It was huge and massively, painfully bright.

She was losing ground, too.

And then she thought that she might be having an out-of-body experience.

A part of her consciousness separated itself from the battle being fought and just flat-out analyzed the situation. Just like that. And this is what it had to say: _I am fighting for my life against a more learned wizard who made me believe his lies and drew me in slowly, only to show his true colors and use me and try to destroy and kill me._

He was trying to _kill _her. He had been her savior, and she had been unable to see the warning signs that he was just the opposite. And now there was no escape, no mercy, and apparently no remorse.

She still remembered, abruptly, painfully, the smile he had worn when he tore her heart out how many lifetimes ago.

He had _taken_ her heart, as much as she had tried to deny it, in a disguise as close to an angel as this world could provide. He had been deceiving her right from the beginning. He had shown her some of the better things in life after the low point she had sunk to; how to hope, how to dream, how to make it happen. She wished wistfully that maybe some of those dreams had been real. But in the end, it was all an elaborate plot, a scheme, to break a promise that he had made. The promise to protect her. Now she saw the lie. She saw that damned lie inside out, upside down, and backwards.

This was one angel that had fallen and she hoped would roast in hell forever. He had no right to do anything to her. He could have chosen any other life. Any other way to do things. Any way to enter her life, or better, to have not bothered at all.

And another lie that she realized through a random side thought: total bull that the Witch of the Waste was out to get them both. It was all him. All him. All the time. Every time.

This—this—_demon_—had been the one to kill her before she reached eighteen years of age, no matter the time or place. Even if she didn't remember each and every time, the scars were there, some hidden perhaps, but present all the same.

The tangent of mind ended and she pushed back against the flow of magic energy with new vigor, lacing it with unbridled anger. She let her emotions rule the streams of raw power sparking from her splayed fingertips, gritting her teeth and starting to squint against the growing globe of energy that seemed to be debating which way to implode. Or explode.

Maybe it was just her imagination, but Howl's form was growing hazier and hazier, flickering more and more, the greater the power he expended.

Those eyes were definitely green. They were emerald green.

His hair had turned back to that fiery shade that it had taken before going back to its natural raven black.

He was slightly shorter, and suddenly, it wasn't Howl at all.

That was unmistakably, impossibly, horribly, the Witch of the Waste: in the flesh.

Sophie gritted her teeth and decided to concentrate solely on staying alive. She was eighteen tomorrow, damn it all to hell! And she—was going—to make it! Illusions aside, she pushed harder.

She didn't see that only exactly three people in the crowds below had taken notice of the events on the rooftop. She didn't see one of the three take off running for the base of the building, banging on the front door desperately before trying to force open a window.

She didn't hear someone yelling her name in anguish from the corner of the roof. She didn't hear the confused murmurs of the two other people on the ground as they witnessed the spectacle by themselves, others unable to see it.

She didn't smell the buildup of sulfur and stinging smoke in the air, or the burnt crackles of electricity as a cable on the roof burst and sparked briefly.

She couldn't taste anything on the air except the now overpowering awful sickly sweet odor.

She could only feel the magic draining the energy from her, slowly, not enough to kill her, but enough to weaken her while she fought for her life. She could feel that she didn't have long until her reserves ran out. She could feel what used to be tingling traces become roaring flames of magic venting through her fingertips, like she wasn't able to expel it from herself fast enough.

And she had no idea what was happening when a third beam of light flashed explosively from the corner of the rooftop, a dark shape taking form behind it.

It was like slow motion, and later Sophie wasn't quite sure if time hadn't been in fact slowed down…as if by magic.

The figure that had become the Witch was knocked violently to the side, shrieking at a frequency that was inhumanly high and keening. The sound rode up higher and higher until it was too shrill to be heard but could be _felt_ slicing through the air to replace the stream of magic that had been emanating to shoot towards Sophie only a fraction of a second earlier.

Sophie herself was so sharply shocked out of her state of acutely focused concentration that her own magic faltered, and she cut it off with some difficulty once she saw her enemy appearing to weaken. She kept her guard up, though, and was so painfully aware of everything around her all of a sudden that it was hard to stand when combined with the physical exhaustion.

Her vision blurred slightly and she shook her head to clear it, blinking rapidly and squinting. The noise from the subsequent explosion was racking her eardrums with every sound frequency imaginable. Pure white light was radiating up into the sky in something equivalent to a mushroom cloud, flashing and booming like the flare of a freshly lit fire. It cracked and blazed once more, rocketing ever skyward, then dissipated all at once into a shimmering shockwave that boomed deeply as it shot out in all directions. Sophie's hair and clothes whipped around her as she stumbled slightly before bracing herself again.

As her senses began to clear all over again, her attention snapped to the movement in the shadowed corner. Her vision was still spotted with blotches of dark blue and purple blindness, but she wasn't taking any chances. And the shape looked ominously familiar. What was she going to be put through now?

Sophie raised her hands aggressively. "Come on out, you cowardly bastard," she snarled. Her voice was still strong, and fueled by rage and adrenaline. She breathed deeply, centering herself and preparing herself for whatever was going to happen next. She didn't care that she was halfway drained from the emotional stress and pain and the physical exertion of using so much magic against a stronger opponent. Because _she_ was going to be victorious. _She_ was going to be the one to endure on forever. She was fully prepared for whatever was going to be thrown at her next.

"Sophie," rasped a hoarse yet unmistakable voice.

Except for that.

"You—just go away and forget I ever existed!" she fairly shrieked. "_Ever_! I don't care! Okay? I'll forget about magic and forget about you and forget about everything else, and lead a normal life! A normal…life!"

"No… No, wait—"

"For what?" she screeched, close to hysterics. She was extremely unstable in just about every way conceivable, and dangerously close to losing it completely. "For you to come kill me? I don't think so! Now just go away! Please—!"

"Oh, Sophie—you don't get it, do you? You don't understand what just happened. Or, let me rephrase that," he chuckled dryly, but not cruelly, "you don't fully understand. What did you see?"

"I saw _you trying to fucking kill me!_" she exploded. Literally, exploded. A flare escaped from her right palm but fizzed to a stop right in front of the other human on the rooftop. "You tried to kill me! You told me so! You said so! Now _I'm_ going to _kill_ you_—!_"

"No, Sophie, you're not." Why was he so damned calm? He should be running for the hills if he knew what was good for him! "You're not going to kill me. For one thing, you're not a killer. Tell me I don't know that much. And does this really look right to you?"

"I don't know! I don't know anymore! I just—I just—I—" she was beginning to hyperventilate, the air around her sparking with pent-up power all over again. Finally she could speak again. "I _hate_ you, Howl Pendragon!"

"I— Of course you do. Of course you do. That's why I was trying to just leave you in peace…and…"

"No, no no no no no, we are not doing this again." Her eyes were wild and darting all over the place as she trembled in extreme volatility. "Just go. Just go. Do it. I don't know what just happened. But just go."

"Yes, you do know, Sophie."

"Will everyone stop trying to tell me what I think or don't think, what I know or don't know, what I want or don't want?" Another flash of magic, this time from her left hand. Her condition was amped up another notch when he said her name.

"I'm not, I'm not. Just think, okay? Think for me. Who did you just see over there?" He pointed to his right. "That wasn't me. It wasn't, and you saw that, Sophie. You saw who that was."

There was just a heap on the ground where he had pointed. Sophie hadn't even seen it when her vision had cleared. No one was there. It wasn't a person, or even actual material. Only a dark mass of what looked like a liquid had gathered in the spot where Sophie's dueling adversary had been standing.

"What?" The question barely escaped up her throat and past her lips, but it was enough to make her calm down, and her hands sank down just an inch closer to her sides.

She paced quickly to the spot, not taking her eyes off the man standing off to the right, keeping his distance carefully. Suddenly she reeled back, a hand subconsciously flung over her nose and mouth. It smelled horrible! Like something sickly sweet and acrid, and burning like some kind of unpleasant perfume—_just like the incense that was burning in the Witch's castle—_and now dissolved down to a…hang on.

The slightly ADD fragment of a memory had just crossed her mind without her realizing it. Of course. That was where she remembered that dreadful smell from. It wouldn't have made much sense, except that…

The weird threats.

The stone cold emotions and icy smile.

The sense of wrongness and unfamiliarity.

The odd manner of speaking and off tone of voice.

The desire to see Sophie perish in some painful, unnatural way.

The hologram-like lapses of the being into what seemed to be another person.

…And the smell of hyacinths was back.

"That wasn't you." The words were out before Sophie even realized that she had thought them, and it was too late to take them back.

"Right as usual, angel." There was no green glint in his eyes. No frozen undertone in his voice. No aggression in his posture. No ill emotion except regret that was unbelievably easy to read.

It didn't occur to Sophie that he could be acting. That he could be plotting even now. That he was going to turn the other cheek as soon as she blinked.

Only that she had really known the truth all along, and the only question was: "When did she make the switch?"

"In midair. Remember when I—"

"Disappeared. Yes…" she murmured, her hands having dropped to her sides long ago. Every piece of every event in every time was sliding into place neatly in a chart that was preset into her mind, and only a bit of tweaking was needed to make the occasional component fit perfectly. Well, scratch that. Nothing was actually perfect. But she could have been fooled right then.

"Sophie?"

She turned to him. "It makes sense. It all makes sense now…" The gray eyes were slightly out of focus.

"…And?" he asked tentatively, like she might break, or even explode, with no warning.

"I…I think I…"

"Yes?" he pressed.

"I…think…"

"Oh, damn it all, Sophie—" Howl crossed the remaining distance between them in three long strides and reached around Sophie with both arms, picking her up off the ground and crushing her to him tightly.

Something escaped her, making her twitch like a hiccup would. Something wet and warm was sliding down her face, slowing in its path once it met the cold air.

She shivered, and clung to him desperately.

"…Sophie? …Are you crying?"

"N-no…"

"Sophie…"

_Don't say my name; I can't think straight as it is. _"Howl?"

"Yes?"

"I…think I love you."

His breath caught in his throat. "…I think I love you, too."

**A/N: AAAAHHHHHHHHH! Ahem. So, quite obviously, this can't be the legitimate end. We have loose ends to tie up yet ;) Hopefully everything makes sense—I've proofread for loopholes so many times—but message or review with questions. But just to clarify: (DON'T read this if you somehow skipped straight here without reading the above chapter! Spoiler alert!) the person in the corner on the roof that 'Howl' kept referring to was the real Howl. The person who is mentioned as 'Howl' for the first part is actually the Witch disguising herself as him through an illusion. So there ya go if that was confusing :) BUT you know what, you can review anyway just to make me happy! :D Yeah? Cool. Do it :) So I promise I'll tie up the loose ends (i.e. the three people who could see the magic battle…hint hint). In a little bit. Again, sorry it took, like four months…wow. But I hope you liked the 'dramatic conclusion'! XD Anyhoo. Thanks for reading and peace out til later!**


	13. Chapter 13

**February Breath**

**Disclaimer: It has been one year and three days since this story was published. Have I claimed ownership yet? Nope. Will I? Nope again!**

**A/N: Well, that _was_ quite the gap, wasn't it! *dodges flying paraphernalia* I'M SORRY! Six months and-and-aaaahh! (I got absorbed in my other major story, what can I say? For those of you that are reading Fearless, come on, you have to admit that that's been plenty for me the handle over the past, what, ten months? If you haven't read it, and you're a FFVII fan...well, check it out ^^ but anyway.) It was four months since my last update before that, and, well... I finished this chapter just now, and I kind of like it a lot. Love it, actually. What, you thought I'd leave you with the declaration of love and that's _it?_ Come on, people, give me some credit! *ignores voice saying that after six months after four months after regular weekly updates that's what people tend to think* But, here it is, and I apologize again, but I hope you enjoy it...because it's the conclusion. :)**

**Chapter 13**

His breath caught in his throat. "…I think I love you, too."

"Yo! Lovebirds! Cool it, would ya?" barked a crisp yet grating voice out of nowhere. "There's still a world out here, ya know!"

Howl gave a start, then smiled widely. "Calcifer?"

"Who the heck else would it be?"

"Calcifer!" Sophie cried. "Are you alright? I couldn't get through to you earlier."

"Yeah, well, someone had to protect the castle from the _demon_ trying to get in!" Sophie could just imagine Cal fizzling irritably.

"I knew it," Howl muttered. "It's gone, though, isn't it?" he asked. "It has to be. Its host is dead."

The fire demon was silent for a second, then whooped delightedly. "I _knew_ Sophie could do it! You've got quite a spark, after all! Oop, gotta go. Come back soon…!" And the crackley voice trailed off into the night.

Howl chuckled and gave Sophie a squeeze before releasing her. "You don't even realize how good I feel right now."

She smiled warmly. "Love will do that to you."

He returned it, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. "I guess so—ah! Ow…" he muttered, stumbling back a step.

"Howl? What's wrong? Are you hurt?" Sophie rushed after him, supporting him with one arm while trying to get him to look at her.

"N-no, it's just my…agh…it's so…"

"Howl, what's going on?" She forced herself to stay calm. She didn't detect any kind of curse around, but that didn't mean much. There was a lot she had yet to learn.

"I'm fine…it's just…so heavy…"

She blinked. "What's heavy?"

"…My chest."

"What?" she whispered, then had a thought and pressed a hand to the front of his shirt. There was a second of silence, then a soft _bump_. A few seconds, and another one. _Thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump._ It became steadier and stronger.

"Oh, Howl… You got your heart back." A smile spread back over her face, and she hugged him tightly again.

"I…I did?" He looked down incredulously as he heard his own heartbeat for the first time in years. "…You really are amazing, you know that?"

She smiled into his shoulder and didn't say a word.

"Oh, and Sophie?" he murmured into her hair after a moment.

"Hm?"

"Before you kill me for this, too… I lied about something. Something tiny," he said quickly. "Insignificant, almost. But I think it'll be a lot less awkward for everybody if I tell you right now that I lied about my age the day we met."

"You're kidding, right? How old are you, really?" She pulled back and cocked her head to the side, frowning slightly.

Howl sighed melodramatically. "I'm not even twenty yet," he muttered.

There was a pause, then Sophie started shaking with laughter.

"Don't laugh, I know how much of an idiot I am, trust me—"

"Oh, shut up, you pompous _teenage_ moron," she chuckled, latching onto him again and slapping him on the back with one hand. "Do yourself a favor and stop talking now."

There was a sudden smashing sound, and both the witch and the wizard jumped, ready for almost anything—

"Sophie! Soph, are you…" Someone tall and thin and blonde crashed through the rooftop door. "…What?"

"Justin!" Sophie exclaimed. "Uh… This might take a while to explain."

**~Several hours later~**

I looked around the living room and sighed. It was nearly midnight, and Howl and I had finally finished with our tale. A few hours since the incident on the rooftop, and was I _sore_. In fact, if it hadn't been for that, I would never have believed Howl when he had said how much a duel would tire a witch or wizard out. I fully believed him now.

Speaking of Howl. I could practically feel the emotions rolling off him, and I thought I was correct in attributing that to his recent regain of a heart. I kept throwing glances to my left, to make sure he wasn't going to spontaneously disappear or anything. I knew I was doing it – I couldn't help it, even when he pointedly met my eyes with a look that said _I'm not going anywhere._

Oh. Just kidding. He was actually saying it in my head. That explained it.

_I know. I'm just…on edge._

_Still?_

_Aren't you?_

_Well, of course, but I'm not going to just vanish into thin air. Relax._

_Hmph. I guess. Fine._

"Would you two quit talking like that?" Lettie gave a rather unladylike snort from the couch opposite the two of us. "Just because I haven't learned to do it yet…" The younger girl pouted, but her eyes still lit up with the recurring realization that she had the capability to _learn_ how to do it.

The two people that had followed Justin onto the roof the previous night had been Lettie and our father. A good deal of explaining had passed (my best friend was not in fact dead; I'd been attacked by a witch from a parallel world; I was a witch and Howl was a wizard; no, Dad, he's not dangerous, at least not most of the time; I had rediscovered my past in a rather unorthodox manner; et cetera.) Howl chose to drop a bomb in the form of a 'suspicion' he had. I informed him that that was bull and to spit it out, so he revealed that I had likely inherited my witch powers from my dad, which made a little bit of sense. Lettie had also inherited the gene, and so had Martha; but hers was recessive and comparatively weak but still present.

Justin nudged her with his shoulder and smiled. "You'll learn soon enough."

Yep, those two sure had hit it off. There was absolutely no resentment in this conclusion of mine, because I felt like it was something that they both needed. The thing was, now we had to come up with a legitimate excuse why Justin was suddenly alive and well to present to the astonished general public. We had been lucky to get away unseen last night, but I for one didn't trust our luck to hold.

We had come back to the house, Mom and Martha having found us by then, and a lot more explaining was in order. (Howl and I had to skim over the little detail of his sleeping in my room for the past several nights, but that was a minor detail at this point.) Mom had fainted several times during the course of the few hours.

The look on everyone's faces when they had spotted a sniggering Calcifer in the fireplace was so priceless. He happily crunched down on some bits of charcoal like it was candy, and then said, "What?" That had elicited a few screams plus another instance of unconsciousness from Mom. So then of course we had to explain how the Witch's fire demon had gotten into Howl's castle when Cal was left alone, and the two of them had been battling it out as I blew up the Witch on the roof. That had rendered the evil demon temporarily incapacitated, and apparently just in time, or so said Calcifer, who had a tendency to embellish his epic tales rather flamboyantly. Well, once he had gotten over his indignation at being called an 'it' for several hysterical minutes, at least.

But now that we were all on the same page, the next question was: what now? Now that all the mysteries had been solved, how could any of us ever lead a normal life? How could we go back to the way things were before, when our biggest concerns were college applications and who would do the grocery shopping? How could we go on about our daily lives, hiding a secret that spanned time and worlds, and pretending it was all the same?

In the midst of all this, I realized something. I didn't belong to this world.

Who would have guessed it, but I honestly, literally did not belong here. None of my family did. But all the same, we had all grown here. Our family had expanded here. We had a past, a present, and a future here.

Then again, we had a past and a future in Ingary. We would have had a present, too, if not for those strange, almost cruel twists of fate. But it couldn't be cruel; not when fate had brought us everything else that it had. There was no way to tell how things could have been different. The only sure thing about destiny is that it's never set in stone; not even burned into wood, or even drawn out on slate. It isn't carved into ice that can melt, or painted on a canvas that can be bleached and rewritten over again.

It's traced into sand. The shifting sands of time.

The sand that people walk and run and leap across, leaving footprints twisting and sprawling across the surface, altering it forever but not at all in permanence. The sand that becomes suddenly vulnerable to earth that can crack it; wind that can blow it away and into a new pattern; and water that can erase it and make new tracks to follow. The sand that no one can even begin to comprehend, because no two people will ever see the same pattern in their lives, and no single grain of sand will ever see the same place again where it rests in the tracks of fate.

And that's how it's worked, through every twist and turn of the ages of the past, present and future.

But destiny aside, reality is tough.

I really had no definite future. Our world's idea of a future for me at this point in time would include a college, among other things. I had been accepted to several colleges and universities, but hadn't picked one. I hadn't declared a major. I hadn't decided on a career path.

Society's expectations aside, I had the entire world open before me. And I could easily forget about this one and move on to my second home.

Except for everyone here. Sure, I had made friends and kept a few up until now; but no one was a really close best-friend-for-life like Justin was. I could bear to only visit them at high school reunions and keep in touch through writing. Maria was an exception, and I was willing to take pains for her. But my family would be left behind, too. Sure, they belonged in Ingary as well; there was just no way for a well-established family of five to just _disappear_. Besides, my sisters would have to make the same choice themselves in a few years that I was lingering on now. I had a funny sort of feeling that they might just choose to follow me, and that wasn't helping with the pressure.

It would be almost too easy for me to disappear now…and something was screaming at me to do it.

Maybe it had something to do with the young man with the raven hair sitting next to me. We both knew he would have to return to his true home sooner or later, and I happened to be in love with him. It was weird, but I was pretty sure that every single person in that room knew it, too. Or demon.

And there lay my choice.

"I want to finish out the year," I stated out loud, surprising even myself. Everyone else went silent immediately, and I absently wondered if it was my actual power or the feeling that came from my power that gave me this strange, new sense of authority. "And then," I swallowed hard, "I want to go to Ingary."

Howl squeezed my hand, saying everything at once, as my parents fell upon me, saying that it was my choice and that I should have freedom and the trust to make good decisions and all that. I had almost reached the breaking point of shock in realizing that I wasn't coming back when Howl guessed my thoughts and pointed something extremely important out:

"You know we have the spell on record now, right? We can go back and forth as we please. Didn't I ever mention that the black portal in the castle goes to Wales? I have a sister in Wales," he rushed on. It sounded like a bunch of mostly-nonsense to my family, but it finally sank in what he had said.

"The connection doesn't—I don't know—close or anything?" I gaped at him, hardly daring to believe it.

"No…" he shook his head, looking slightly worried at my confusion. "I visit Megan all the time," he said slowly, realizing something.

"And if you do that by using a portal in the castle…" I gasped, catching on.

"Then there's no reason why I can't create a new one—" A grin began to spread over his handsome face.

"That leads straight to here!" I half-yelled, jumping up and grabbing his hands. "I can go back and forth whenever I want!"

"Wait, so you've been travelling to and from _Wales_ for _years_?" Martha blinked. "We're talking about _Wales_, right? As in, next to England off the coast of northern Europe Wales?"

"Exactly," he grinned back.

"I can come back _whenever I want_," I laughed, in near hysterics, turning toward my parents. "Once I finish the year, I'm telling everyone I'm studying abroad and travelling a lot," I declared. "I'm going to Ingary then…and I'll start a future." I whispered the last part to myself. Howl heard me, though, and he smiled softly, just for me.

"We should probably go on weekends, when we can," he pointed out. "There's a lot to straighten out."

I sighed and blew some hair out of my face. "That's true—hang on." I looked at him suspiciously. "Who knows?" I demanded.

"Well, ah, the King happens to, because he keeps tabs on me because I'm so powerful—" He winced and backed up slightly.

"Oh, no, don't go all slitherer-outer on me, you sneaking wizard!" I poked him in the chest. ("Isn't it hilarious watching her push him around?" I heard Martha ask Lettie with evident delight.)

"Hey, it's not entirely my fault that I'm wanted by the Crown, and, er…" he began defensively, but trailed off and turned to Justin. "Come to think of it, why haven't _you_ done anything?" he wanted to know. We had figured out in the midst of our story-telling that Justin was in fact Prince Justin of Ingary, who had been kidnapped by the Witch of the Waste over a year ago and was presumed dead. That was one of our added responsibilities: to get him back to his uncle, the king, as soon as possible.

Justin grinned mischievously. "I figure Uncle will let you off the hook through his undying gratitude for restoring the heir to the kingdom, as well as reawakening one of its most powerful up-and-coming witches, who happened to destroy the Witch of the Waste herself."

"Well, heck, when you put it that way…" I muttered. "So, um…I'm guessing we should make a quick trip this weekend?" I looked around the room for concurrence, and received it in enthusiasm. "My. This'll be quite the adventure."

"Don't worry about it," Howl advised me, squeezing my hand. "We've much more of history to make, yet. And all the time in the world to do it."

**~*~The Beginning~*~**

**A/N: :) Yeah, so that really is it. Wow, this is the first time I've finished up with a long story like this, and...it's gratifying. Anyways, I hope you liked it (review!) and I'll leave a little bit to the imagination ^^ Thank you so much for keeping up with me this entire time and sticking out my silences, I thank you all for reading, reviewing, favoriting, alerting, and everything, and I welcome reviews for the end of the story! :') See you around!**


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